4 5 - 60 mins drive - There is a guide book in English on Besalu in the living room bookcase. Take your passports too, though you will probably not need them. The Spanish map of Catalunya / Costa Brava (also in the bookcase) might be helpful too.

Drive south on Route National 9 and cross the border into Spain at Le Perthus. Stay on the same road to the centre of Figueres and follow signposts to the right (westward) saying "BESALU 26 km." On arrival at BESALU turn left, cross the bridge and park in the car park provided. Leave your car and after admiring the stunning spectacle of a village apparently unchanged for five hundred years, walk across the medieval bridge to the village and stop to look down at the enormous fish in the river a hundred feet below. There are many charming shops, some selling local goods, such as hand carved wooden kitchen utensils.

If you stay for lunch or dinner the two best restaurants (each with terrace overlooking the river and the bridge) are Pont Vella-on your left as you leave the bridge and enter the village- or Curia Reial- in the south-eastern corner of the first main square you come to. (Plaça Llibertat) The food at each is highly satisfactory and also reasonable.

We have now been to these restaurants several times and found them consistently good,, but lately we prefer the Pont Vella - Lunch is an hour later in Spain than in France. 1 to 3 is common. In hot weather, 12.30 to 4 is even more so. Highly civilised....