Leucate — Le Barcarès

Le Barcarès, on the south-east shore of the Salses-Leucate lagoon: the town’s kite spot is the Parc des Dosses (Dosse Petit sector), on the lagoon — not the sea. Billiard-flat water under the Tramontane, two official kite boxes set out by decree, a cable park right next door — and a Natura 2000 site to respect.

The Parc des Dosses is the emblematic lagoon spot on the south-east shore of the Salses-Leucate lagoon, on the Barcarès side — not the sea, even if one zoning page wrongly files it under « Sea »: every other source, and the prefectoral order, put it on the lagoon. No waves here: the north-west Tramontane flattens the water to a billiard table and makes it a well-known freestyle playground. It’s a framed spot. Two permanent kite boxes (zones 5 and 6, Dosse Petit sector) were drawn up by municipal decree, then carried over into prefectoral order 194/2024, which reserves them for kites and bans the anchoring of other craft. You’re on a Natura 2000 site: respect the wildlife and plant life, and from 1 March to 31 August a twenty-metre band around the Coudalère point, marked by six yellow buoys just south of zone 6, is set aside as a quiet area for protected birds to breed. Your immediate neighbour is the Dins Dilles cable park: its cables run right alongside and are a trap for kites. Launching and landing are banned on the strip of land separating the Dins Dilles basin from the lagoon: you rig and launch from the designated zone, not on the dyke. The flip side of such flat water is a prevailing wind that blows off the land out to the open water: a spot for the experienced — magnificent, but one you read before you ride.