To Sete: End of the line

October 18, 2017

The weather situation is shifting quickly here. We certainly have no complaints about the weather - it's been an unusually fine autumn here, and exceptional cycling weather has been almost the norm for us here. We knew we were taking some risks in scheduling such a late-season tour.

So here's the weather situation - a significant front is coming in, scheduled to arrive sometime midday. The forecast is for scattered thunderstorms today, moving on to a significant chance of rain tomorrow. Blowing in from the southeast, the front is expected to arrive with. Twenty mph winds.

Facing this is our personal situation. Today is a travel day, moving us from here in Aigues-Mortes to Sete, our final destination. It's only a flat 35 miles from here, although we also planned a side spur to the Espiguette lighthouse. We could leave Aigues-Mortes early and probably reach Sete before the weather sets in, but won't: first, we have to walk the fortified walls of the city - they're the reason we chose this town to stay in, after all - but they aren't open until 10. We'll take our chances with the weather this afternoon, and race the storm. At least the winds will favor us so we should make good time and endure less of the brunt of any precipitation.

And tomorrow? We are planning a loop ride circling the Etang de Grau, the large inland lagoon separating Sete and Agde. We'll make our decisions there in the morning when we have better information on the day.

So, since we're in no rush this morning, we take our time and linger over a great breakfast at our hotel (the winner of the best muesli of the tour award!). Then Rachael looks up, and comments that I should look over my shoulder and out the window at the sunrise.

Red sky at morning, bikers take warning. The weather has changed, and a storm is blowing in -- thunderstorms, 20 mph winds, thankfully in our favor. Looks like these last two days of the tour could be a bit sloppy.

I'm glad to have a bit of extra time this morning, actually. Walking to town for dinner and especially biking in along the canal last night, I was taken by the long queue of beautiful old vessels lining both banks the banks of the canal. It's like a gallery, an outdoor museum. I grab the camera after breakfast and go out for a short walk along them, capturing photos of my favorites. There are many favorites, enough to dedicate a separate page of the journal to:

It's a bit windy up here on the walls this morning. Something big is definitely blowing our way.

One of the attractions of walking the walls at Aigues-Mortes is looking down on the saline lagoons. I'd like to come back and see this again under different lighting conditions.

Photography can be excellent cross training for the touring cyclist.

We make it back to the hotel with just enough time to pack up and check out before noon. It's not raining yet, although the horizon to the east looks menacing. We start biking westward along the canal, buoyed by a strong tailwind. To our right we pass a series of lagoons, all well populated with flamingos - it's the sort of situation I expected to see yesterday, but didn't find. I'd take a few minutes to stop for shots of them with my zoom camera, except that it died yesterday and is down for the duration since I failed to pack its charger.

We're agnostic on whether to include the spur to Espiguette, and wait until we reach its turnoff to decide. Once there though, we decide to include it - we're not wet yet and are making good time, so we decide to risk lengthening the ride a bit. It's only about a ten mile detour - five there, into the wind, and five back.

I included Espiguette partly to lengthen what would otherwise be a rather short, easy ride, and partly because I just like lighthouses and seek them out. When we get there though, we don't actually get much of a view of it - it looks like it's on a military preserve, and from the accessible beach only the top of it is visible. I imagine that if we walked along the beach a ways we'd come to a good vantage point, but this isn't the day to throw in additional time on another photo op.

As it turns out though, the lighthouse isn't the big attraction here - it's the beach itself. A protected landscape, it's a wild six mile stretch of sand and dunes - quite beautiful in severe way. It feels especially so today, with strong winds, a storm on the horizon, and not another sole in sight. I regret that we don't have the time for a longer visit - just one more ticket item for our next trip back to this wonderful region.

We hunker down on the more or less protected side of a small dune, quickly downing our sandwiches and doing our best to keep the blowing sand out of them. Soon though, it's clear that the time has come - it's darkening quickly around us, so we hustle back to our bikes, hoping that we haven't waited too long. Before leaving though, we pause long enough to pour about half a pound of sand from our shoes.

Leaving Aigues-Mortes along the Rhone-Sete Canal

Just outside Aigues-Mortes, and we're alone, biking along the lagoons again.

This is what I thought we'd see yesterday on our ride to the lighthouse along the outer dike road. Today, we see flocks of flamingoes all day long.

The color of these shallow saline ponds is really striking.

Lunch break by the sea, looking back at the Espiguette lighthouse. We weren't here long - just enough to bolt down our sandwiches. It is very windy, and we're hunkered behind the little shelter that one of these small dunes provides.

A picture of disappointment. When I first saw this tumbler, the sun was out and the shadow it cast in the sand was sharp and dark. As soon as I pulled out the camera though the sun went behind the clouds and never did return. This is the clearest it ever got after that.

On the beach, Espiguette. It's a protected sandy seashore, lined with dunes. The sky is darkening fast, so we don't stay long.

The sky is getting seriously dark now, so we high-tail it. Fortunately we've got a strong tailwind so we make good time, but with about thirty-five miles to go we worry all afternoon that we're due for a drenching.

The remainder of the ride to Sete, racing to stay ahead of the wind, was a significant navigation challenge and frankly stressful. I won't credit as one of my planning successes of the tour. For much of the distance we were almost biking blind, trying to find a good cycling route but uncertain whether it would dead end at one of the many water gaps that break up the seashore here and drive us back (and toward the wind and impending rain) for a different route entirely.

The ride is complicated by several factors: the impending storm, obviously; the remaining hours of daylight, given our late start; the fact that the road paralleling the sea is unexpectedly a controlled access highway that forbids bicycles; and the fact that the path along the Rhone-Sete Canal is unexpectedly not open to bikes either (nor to foot traffic of any kind, for that matter). More than a bit stressful, especially as the day wore on and we were getting further and further invested in an option that might prove to be a dead end.

In the end, we get lucky - no harm done, except to our nerves. First off, our rain jackets work well and exactly as designed. It starts raining two different times, and both times we stop and put our raincoats on, with the good effect that the rain immediately stops. We arrive at our hotel dry.

Second, we're lucky on our route finding. We find nearly the best route the whole way, and enjoy a very quiet seaside ride that is mostly just a pedestrian/cycle path. Knowing that it exists now and how to find it, I'd come this way again. We have one short stretch where we miss the best way and are thrown onto the busy highway for a mile and a half - but fortunately this section is not marked to prohibit bicycles and has a meager but adequate shoulder. We arrive at our hotel safe and intact, with perhaps a half an hour of daylight to spare.

Canon-Plage. I've never seen so many of these sails clustered together. I wish we had more time to stop and watch, but with the storm breathing down our backs we can't afford to pause.

This was a beautiful stretch, wedged between the sea and the unbikable A9. We would have enjoyed it more if we were sure of our route, but we're flying blind just a bit, not really certain that this will keep going. In the back of our minds is that we'll have to backtrack several miles and take a more inland route.

I don't think I've ever seen a white peacock. I didn't know they were a thing.

This is at the eastern end of a seven mile stretch of the Rhone-Sete canal that cuts across the center of a large lagoon, Etang de Vic. The route I had mapped out follows the path beside the canal, but it's not permitted - and rightly so. Now that I'm here looking at it, it clearly would be unsafe crossing this exposed expanse in a storm. We had to improvise a route the rest of the way to Sete.

The western end of a lonely span of the Rhone-Sete Canal, where it crosses Etang de Vic.

It looks like we're arriving in Sete just in time. I can't quite believe that we rolled in dry.

Sete makes a poor first impression on us, but that reflects our state of mind when we arrive, and the fact that we find what is probably the worst route into the city, through an industrial quarter on busy roads not really suited to biking. I've no doubt that there are perfectly safe, enjoyable routes into town; and tomorrow we will discover that Sete itself is a delightful place, well worth the time we have allowed here and then some - I would have loved to have had an additional day here. Tonight though, we're just not that into it, and are anxious to get into our room, shower and warm up, and go find a meal. We're both stressed out and starved.

So it's an annoyance that we have a hard time getting to our room. The lovely woman staffing reception speaks just enough English to communicate that our bikes need to go into the garage, which she will now go open - but not enough to communicate where it is. Turn left, and left again, and she'll meet us there. Which we do, to no avail. Five minutes later we're still waiting. I leave Rachael posted there to watch for her and leave to circle the entire block, ending back at the desk. She's on the phone, and looks at me with some exhasperation - we've failed to connect somehow.

After several minutes on the phone (while Rachael is still waiting outside in the dusk, and badly needing to get to the bathroom), she explains again, and sets off to open the door. I go back to Rachael, but she's still there. I stay this time and send Rachael off to check around the next corner. Success! There are three left turns, not two - she didn't consider the one leaving the hotel to be a turn, since there's only one way to go.

She leaves us in the garage, points to the hotel access at the far end, and hustles back to the desk. Immediately the lights go out, and its pitch black. Fortunately Rachael has loaded a flashlight app on her phone, so we can find our way back, and finally reach the room and it's badly needed facilities.

I pull out the iPad to check the mail, but the wifi doesn't appear to work. Back to the front desk, where I'm informed that there's a problem with the internet. The points out the front window of the hotel in explanation, explaining nothing.

Home, sweet home. For two nights.

Should be adequate. We could have invited a couple of friends over for a slumber party.

Today's ride: 49 miles (79 km)
Total: 1,570 miles (2,527 km)

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