You meet them, just back from the Canaries or some where similar, and admire their jauntiness, their mild browning a tan is some thing you don't talk of now with all those scares around.
But just through being away, eating different food, they are cured of that odd condition mentioned here recently, SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or words to that effect, meaning starved of light. A doctor friend, who agrees that there's something in this lack of light, plumps for skiing in Switzerland, where you not only get good exercise but benefit enormously from the brilliant mountain top sun over snow. (You don't lie out in it.) And, just, now, comes the annual, packet of literature from a region of France which claims to have everything in winter, snow, mountains and skiing
In spring, mountain bike rides and your first visit to the beach
In summer, the pleasures of the sea
In autumn, all the colours of the countryside, and the beach is still there for you.
And what do all these four seasons have in common?
THE SUN.
There's a lot in what they say.
For this is the Roussillon, tucked away in the south west corner of France, on the Mediterranean, at the foot of the Pyrenees. If you tire of the beach in summer, you can climb, by car or by one of the best known small lines in Europe The Little Yellow Train up to plains and meadows where the air is what you'd expect at some six thousand feet. It is an area which prides itself on its early fruit and vegetable growing.
Cherries come in to Dublin from South America in the winter. In May you can eat, in Roussillon, cherries like you've never tasted before.
Same, in time, with peaches, apricots, pears and now the kiwi And you've a treat in Collioure, anchovies. It is that usual holiday place one that lives up to its best idea of itself How did we get into this travelogue? Just contemplating the grey, cold days of our rapid advance to Spring which may bring us more grey days. SAD in deed. Envious, too.