And while you’re at it, you can pose as a polyglot: the information is given in French, Catalan and English.LUNCH ON THE RUNRound your stroll off with lunch at Le France (00 33 4 68 51 61 71), a stylish restaurant serving traditional French cuisine, which has been converted from the ground floor of the ornate stock exchange building. The €12.50/£9 menu runs from noon-2pm and consists of starter and main course, or main and dessert. You can eat at the outside tables, or take your place in the cool of the restaurant’s steel-and-glass interior.TAKE A VIEWThe strange thing about the Palais des Rois de Majorque (open daily, 10am-6pm, admission €4/£3) is that the high, narrow streets of the old town render it invisible from street level until you reach its vast brick fortifications, which date from the 17th century. The tower has now been redeveloped as a regional museum (open daily except Tuesday, 9.30am-6pm; admission €4) and a scale-model inside the portal shows how the city looked in 1686.

Rather more plush is the H? Mercure (00 33 4 68 35 67 66; ) at 5 bis cours Palmarole, near the tourist office, where double rooms cost €82/£58 per night, plus €10 per person for breakfast, and family suites are €115/£81 per night.TAKE A HIKEAt Place de la Victoire, the curving walls of Le Castillet are all that remain of this part of the old city ramparts. A double room costs from €46/£32 per night, plus €5.50 per person for breakfast. Alternatively, the three-star H? de France (00 33 4 68 34 92 81) at 16 Quai Sadi Carnot has rooms with views of the Basse. Doubles start at €45/£32, plus €6 per person for breakfast. The river T?bypasses the city centre to the north.CHECK INThere are plenty of budget hotels to choose from.

For location, try the H? de la Loge (00 33 4 68 34 41 02; ) at 1 rue Fabriques-Nabot, a pleasant building on a quiet street in the old town. The old town itself gets progressively more residential and crumbling the further you travel from the busy streets round Place Arago and rue de l’Ange. A shuttlebus service meets each incoming flight at the tiny airport and deposits passengers at the train station; the 15-minute trip costs €4.50/£3 per person each way.GET YOUR BEARINGSA ring-road of wide boulevards encircles central Perpignan, but you can easily fill your itinerary without going much beyond the limits defined by the Basse river to the north, the walls of the Palais des Rois de Majorque to the south, the bustling Place Arago to the west and, in the east, the shady gardens of the Palais des Congr? It’s in the Palais des Congr?that you’ll find the tourist office (00 33 4 68 66 30 30; ; open Mon-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 10am-5pm). Sun-seekers will be attracted by the steamy August and respectable September temperatures, but the city’s compact old town offers plenty of diversions of its own: smart shops and caf? a maze of elegantly dilapidated streets and squares, and the vast Palais des Rois de Majorque, which dominates the south of the city.BEAM DOWNRyanair (0871 246 0000; ) is the only carrier to run flights direct from the UK to Perpignan, with departures twice daily from London Stansted Expect to pay about £100 return per person. Road signs and street names are displayed in both languages; caf? too, are as likely to be serving food drenched in sofregit (a Catalan sauce) as they are to be toasting croque-monsieurs. The border with Spain lies a mere 20km away and there’s a marked Catalan flavour to the place.

Perpignan – the capital of the Roussillon region, in France’s south-easternmost corner – is French, but only just. WHY GO NOW?

WHY GO NOW?
Because you like the idea of experiencing two cultures for the price of one. It is the sound of Niagara Falls, slowed down to lower the pitch. Listen out for it on the next Radio 4 drama and imagine yourself at Niagara.. It provides an unobtrusive wash of sound of the sort that could be heard from a rooftop in London, New York or Hong Kong.Yet this noise is purely natural.