Day 35: Sete to Colombiers

April 30, 2018

Still feeling a bit chilled and shell shocked from yesterday, we did noyt take the time to find our way to the old centre of Sete. But we still got some sense of the place, especially its status as a sea port, as we made our way out of town. We saw boats of all sorts, and that same canal like harbour situation that we had noticed at Le Grau du Roi and Palava, with interesting buildings lining the sides and boats at anchor.

Industrial harbour scene with jetty in the background.

Here is part of the story of the jetty. I really only put this in here because it reminded me that I had not mentioned Louis IX and the fact that as "St Louis" he is hot stuff at Aigues Mortes. Yes Louis left from the church there in 1248 on the 7th crusade and 1270 on the 8th. As a result he got sainted and also has his statue in the main square. No doubt lots of hotels and pizza places are also named after him!

Leaving Sete heading west was way easier than trying to enter from the east. There is a bike path that even has fancy tile bike mosaics set into it. This starts out under the hills around Sete and then continues out to the "lido" beaches that run for several kms by the open sea.

At Sete we are temporarily really at the Mediterranean, complete with palm tree.

Yes, the Grampies have once again reached the sea.

The cycle path stretches out along the sea front beaches

In warmer weather these beaches would be covered with vacationers

All this nice bike path stuff produces a false sense of confidence in the bike path planners. Like, you might even start to believe you could get to Agde without trauma. Huumpph.

By the time you reach the end of that long stretch of beach, you are generally in Marseillan. Now if you start with the assumption (as we did) that the route from here all the way to Toulouse and beyond would be the Canal du Midi, then what you want to do it find the canal. That is, after all, the official Eurovelo 8 route. So would any authorities put up any sign about any of that when the Lido ends? Not on your life. Rather, there is a "rond point" which actually has all sorts of bike path in and around it. None are the right ones. We just sailed on through the rond point, blithely going with the flow. Only some kms down somewhere did we wake up and say "what now?". So we ground our way back to the rond point and cast about, with the help of the GPS, and made our way to the little marked and inconspicuous spot where the Canal du Midi and its tow path arrive at the sea. There, we and other cyclists milled about, asking each other "Is this really the place?".

Finally we started down the tow path, and lasted about 2 minutes. It was muddy and rutted, and no way suitable for anything but an unloaded mountain bike. So we retreated, with the resolve to take the D612 instead. Back to the rond point and off in yet another direction.

The rond point featured a statue and discussion of this local sport of greased pole walking. We wish they would pay more attention to cycle touring.

We came to the D612, which turned out to be way too big to be safe. But there was a sign for some kind of fairly parallel path. Possible? maybe, but we had another idea.

Maybe we could go down toward Cap d'Agde, and pick up an alternative route into Agde? So we struck off south d eventually found ourselves in Cap d'Agde, but unable to find any usable roads to Agde. Maybe we needed Tourist Information and/or a real Michelin map of the Department.

That embroiled us in the maze/construction nightmare that is Cap d'Agde. We reached the Tourist Information at 12:15, expecting it to be closed - but hey, it was open ('till 12:30). No matter, the lady there really had no idea.

So we beat our way back to the point where we had struck off south, and went the other way. Eventually we did actually reach Agde, and found a place to buy a Michelin map. But after a morning of fighting for a route amid high traffic roads , we figured we had better buck up and get onto that darn Canal.

This time we lasted about 30 minutes, or the amount of time it took to find a place to flee. We just got up on a bridge and headed off on a road - any road that was not a muddy track would be an improvement.

We ended up back at Agde. Now with the help of the map, we scoped out a possible way to Beziers. The main thing for this would be the D28.

Are you getting dizzy and confused with all this routing? That's how we felt riding it!

It would be nice to say things improved when we entered Beziers. Well it was interesting, anyway. The outskirts we came through were a high traffic swirl, with every sort of box store/franchise operation putting in an appearance. That includes French ones, but also some American - like McDonald's and Burger King, of course, and also the pseudo American Buffalo Grill.

Being apparently very slow to learn, we figured we should again take to the Canal du Midi, which should be ok within a city. But now again traffic blocked our way. After an hour of sidewalk riding and general traffic fighting, we got onto the canal. And yes, for a bit it was ok. The path was acceptable and we even saw some baby ducks, including one "ugly duckling":

From a distance we could also better appreciate Beziers. While inside it, we could not really characterize any neighbourhoods or building styles. But from a distance, it is very impressive.

The path was particularly good where the canal has nine locks in a row - the nine locks of Fonserannes. This is an engineering marvel from 1697, and now a tourist attraction.

But after Fonserannes, mud again. Again we fled, finding some other way. Checking our past blogs we see that there will be no relief from this for 124 km - almost all the way to Toulouse. We will just need to find another way!

So once again it was 8 p.m. before we straggled into our destination. This was La Colombiere, a B&B in Colombier. Pierre Claude and Eveline run this, and it is surely the best. The grounds have gardens and even a pool, and the room we are in is so big that we are risking losing our stuff because there are so many places to put things down. Everything is immaculately clean, making us a little nervous, in fact. For example, if a crumb would fall from your cookie onto the floor you would definitely find it and pick it up. It's not anything the totally gracious Eveline (Pierre is away - sick Mom) said, but you just can see all the care put in here in construction and maintenance and would in no way want to mess up anything.

After two very long days, we are ready for a slight rest. Our version of that is that we told Eveline not to worry about making an early breakfast. and while Carcassonne might be a logical next target for us, we might just plan on going shorter. We definitely would like to get back to appreciating our surroundings and enjoying the ride. We know smoother sailing is ahead, so we may take it easier until that smoothness materializes.

Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 2,307 km (1,433 miles)

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