Being welcomed yesterday at the hotel with the sounds of Stan Getz told us we were in the right place. The owner was sitting in the dining room playing his guitar and he is very talented. Chatting with him, a fellow jazz aficionado made for an interesting bi-language exchange. Music is truly an international language.
The village of Le Grau du Roi is a bustling fishing town. The marina is packed with pleasure boats and very interesting fishing vessels. We are lucky to be here now as the heavy tourism has not started. We see quite a few couples who are renting condos and enjoying beach life, a few cyclists touring and locals out for a day ride.
Much of the coast in this area features a succession of high rise condos which are available for rent. Since it is not high season, the atmosphere is quite relaxed and sleepy. Couples our age and young families are wandering to the beach or to their condos. Our route is paved and follows the promenade which provides access to the beach. In this stretch, there are over 90 walkways to the beach.
As we are following the EV8 and 17, the signage and riding has been good. Later in the day we had some frustrations as the signage would suddenly disappear and we did more than our share of backtracking and scratching our heads as to where we are. Nonetheless, we made it to Sete, which looks like a lovely city. We are staying beside the Opera House in the centre of town. At the previous town Frontingan, we tried to camp, but we just couldn’t do it. There were 3 campgrounds in one area, and each has hundreds of mobile homes for rent with motor homes crammed in to any available space and tents -forget about it. The price was high and the camping (or lack thereof) was about as bad as we have ever seen.
Luckily for us, in France we have been able to find reasonably priced 2s hotels which have been very good.
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Corrine, the owner of Les Acadias was kind and thoughtful.
For good reason, each street is one way. However for us, it made us get lost a few times. We finally gave up and went the wrong way, which in France, seems to be okay.
Le Grau is a picturesque fishing village on the Mediterranean. Such is the wonder of travelling solo as we hadn’t preplanned a stop here, but we are so glad we did.
We are approaching a fork in the road and we will make a bad choice based on the advice of a local man we met earlier. He gave a thumbs up to following the canal to the left. We should have listened to our instincts and gone inland to the village of Ville dive les-Maguelone.
Oh yes, it is bumpy and hard to find a good line to ride. We met a group who had come from the other direction and their faces said it all. Turn around!! We had come about 3 km and had about 4 more to go - a good decision. This area had a dearth of signage which added to our confusion.
Pétanque for us is like the national sport of France -in direct competition with fishing. Every village, city has pitches and it is so popular. There were 4 or 5 matches going on at once here.
Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles) Total: 1,761 km (1,094 miles)
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Steve Miller/GrampiesAre you planning to ride the canal de midi? If yes, please do yourselves a favour and reconsider, at least until near Frontignan. It is an impossible ride with a loaded touring bike, and for you with the tandem it would be a nightmare. The picture you have above of your canal path is exactly the Canal de Midi. Search out adjacent D roads, you will be much happier. Reply to this comment 6 years ago
Barry BartlettTo Steve Miller/GrampiesThanks for looking out for us - our big rig does have its challenges, but we love it anyway. We did ride about 10-15 km yesterday on the Canal du Midi (with some trepidation as we have read horror stories about it) but the section we rode was paved and lovely. Pretty lucky. But then today, we rode through an area south of Narbonne in a protected area along a canal, very isolated on spits which we couldn’t get out of and it wasn’t so good. But not as bad as the other day. I am glad we saw what we did today, but I would reroute another time. Reply to this comment 6 years ago
