Harbour

Collioure

4.1Collioure, FranceLanguedoc-Roussillon

Maximum length: 65 ft
VHF channel: 9
Maximum draught: 8 ft

Catalan harbour on the Cote Vermeille, 30 km south of Perpignan, tucked between Cap Bear and the Pyrenees foothills.

Guide

Approach and anchoring

Open roadstead entered from the east. About 90 moorings on buoys laid in the bay, no alongside pontoons for visitors. Maximum draught 2.5 m on the outer buoys. Exposed to easterlies and well sheltered from the tramontane from the north-west, but the buoys roll in an E or SE swell, so in a NW pick a buoy well out in the bay. Early and late in the season only one or two buoys are laid and boats can anchor in about 6 m on good holding. VHF 9. Call the capitainerie before arrival.

Practical

Buoy moorings allocated by the capitainerie on arrival, around 50 to 55 euros a night for a 12 to 13 m boat and about 15 to 20 euros for a four hour daytime stop on the black buoys. Three buoys can be booked through the town tourist office website, the rest are first come. A free dinghy shuttle runs from the harbour office to shore until about 20:00, call to request it. Water and fuel at neighbouring Port-Vendres, 1 NM to the south-east. Full shops, bakery, butcher and supermarket within 300 m of the beach. Train station 400 m uphill with direct service to Perpignan and Barcelona.

Ashore

Chateau Royal, the 13th-century fortress of the Kings of Majorca, stands at the head of the harbour and is open to visitors. The Notre-Dame-des-Anges church with its cylindrical bell tower, a former medieval lighthouse, sits on the southern mole. Fort Saint-Elme and its military museum are 1.5 km uphill by footpath. GR 10 coastal path to Port-Vendres in 45 minutes.

History

A Roman and then Catalan fishing port, Collioure was the main harbour of the Kings of Majorca in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1905 Henri Matisse and Andre Derain spent the summer painting here, a stay now identified as the birth of Fauvism. Around twenty reproductions of their canvases are posted on the quayside, on the exact spots where they were painted.

Story

Collioure anchovies have been salted locally since the Middle Ages and still hold a Label Rouge quality mark; two salting houses remain active in the village.