Property watch: See what €50,000, €180,000 and over €1million buys in Pyréneés-Orientales
Pyréneés-Orientales is one of the few departments in France where residents can go to ski resorts as well as the seaside
The ancient city of Perpignan is the heart of the Pyréneés-Orientales, with good rail and road links, and a small airport with summer flights to the UKIakov Filimonov / Shutterstock
Other main towns: Canet-en-Roussillon, Argelès-sur-Mer, Saint-Cyprien
The largest towns in Pyréneés-Orientales are all on the plain between the mountains and the sea, and not far from the ancient city of Perpignan.
With a population of nearly 120,000, Perpignan has a quarter of the residents of the department, with a fair number of them speaking Catalan as a first language.
Tourism, especially since the 1960s, has been the motor of growth for most towns.
Residents now boast that their department is one of the few where you can go to ski resorts as well as the seaside.
Before the advent of sun, sea and sand holidays, villagers along the coast lived their lives between marshes, mosquitoes and fruit and vegetable farming, with the unpredictable winds from the mountains a constant companion.
The Tramontane, a wind from the north-west, can blow with gusts of 100km/h for days at a time. It is for this reason that the Roman canal tiles on the roofs of the region are twice the size and weight of those in the gentler south-western parts of France.
Up in the mountains there are now six large ski resorts, developed since the 1950s.
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Mount Cangiou, the icon of the region and capped with snow at its 2,785m-high summit for most of the year, draws the eyes upwards from the coast and towards the mass of the mountains marking the border with Spain.
As the last big French city before Spain, Perpignan has good rail and road links, as well as a small airport with summer links to Birmingham, Dublin, Leeds and London Stansted.
The road network is dominated by the A9 autoroute, completed in the late 1990s as part of a trans-European project linking the Rhône valley with Catalonia, via Perpignan.
Away from the autoroute’s roar, the RN 116, which follows the Têt valley, is the main link between Perpignan and the mountainous and thinly populated west of the department.
Train services include the high-speed line between Perpignan and Figueras in Spain, with Perpignan also being a hub for TER regional trains.
One of France’s most famous lines, now mainly a tourist attraction, is the Ligne de Cerdagne. Its distinctive yellow train crosses the Col de la Perche, the highest point on the French railway network at 1,592m.
Property in Pyréneés-Orientales is fairly expensive, due to its popularity as a tourist destination.
There are a large number of second homes – in the commune of Les Angles for example, close to mountain lakes, they account for 90% of properties.
The tight squeeze into valleys or holiday parks means gardens are usually small.
The following were all available at the time of writing:
€50,000 or under
This property is ready to move into, and has a south-facing view over the townPap.fr
This two-bedroomed flat on the market for €50,000 is in the middle of the medieval village of Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda and has large French windows opening to a south-facing view over the town and foothills of the mountains.
It is located on the second floor of a three-storey building and comes with a living room, a room used as a kitchen, a shower room, separate WC, a cellar and rights over a small courtyard.
It looks as though the flat could be lived in immediately, while the necessary work to refresh and rejuvenate it is carried out.
This property, close to the Spanish border, is akin to an old country homeSeLoger.com
This three-bedroomed house on the market for €179,900 is situated in the village of Saint-Laurent de Cerdans, in the high country close to the Spanish border. It was built in 1984 but the exposed beams and wooden ceilings give it an air of an old country home.
Located on a high spot on the edge of the village, it has views of the mountains and of the old village below it.
The kitchen/living room and two bedrooms are on the ground floor, while upstairs there is a third bedroom and another room which could be converted into a further bedroom, games room or large study.
A garage and a cellar are also built into the house, which has the luxury of a 425m2 garden.
This Collioure home is just 10 minutes walk from the beachBellesdemeures.com
Squeezed into a plot on the hills around Collioure, this house was built out of white concrete in 1998.
Rather than views of the sea, it looks inland over hills topped with forts.
It is only 10 minutes’ walk from the beach and the centre of the historic town, loved by painters.
On the other side of the property, vines, pruned in the local manner into stand-alone bushes, grow on ancient terraces before being turned into the heavy red wine the village is famous for.
The two-storey villa has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, a lift between the floors and an outside pool with an outside summer kitchen/barbecue area beside it.
