Day 65: Sete to Beziers

October 13, 2024

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I don't know what we thought we were doing in past trips to this area, but it seems we mostly missed the beauty of cities like Sete and later, Beziers. It must have been something about our routing, because now as then we did not make a special effort to research and visit the towns. But this time around, it was all there in front of us.

Just out of the Ibis in Sete, we were looking at this.

Parking your boat in front of your house is a plus.

I took this and the above shots stand outside the Spar grocery, on the right.

Most of Sete is on a hill, that we somehow avoided. Here is a peek up a street as we passed.

More than in the Camargue, we are feeling the proximity of the sea and the sand and the (still meagre but nice) warmth. So this brings to mind songs from our formative years that were about the sea. For example, "All the Diamonds in this World" by Bruce Cockburn:

All the diamonds in this world

That mean anything to me

Are conjured up by wind and sunlight
Sparkling on the sea
I ran aground in a harbor town
Lost the taste for being free
Thank God He sent some gull-chased ship
To carry me to sea
Two thousand years and half a world away
Dying trees still grow greener when you pray
Silver scales flash bright and fade
In reeds along the shore
Like a pearl in sea of liquid jade
His ship comes shining
Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns
His ship comes shining

We are so much by the sea:

And here we also think of Joni Mitchell, after whom our Joni was named. We think of her "Song to a Seagull":

Somehow we avoided the hill at the Corniche of Sete, and found ourselves on a long and beautiful promenade adjacent to the sea. Here there was a perfect cycling surface, the sea and beach, and fencing needed to contain the shifting dunes.

Here too we noticed some children who we know are forming lifelong impressions of what nature is like here:

We came across a little (very little) fort, that turned out to be part of a defensive line (Like the Maginot line) built in the 1700's.

An info panel explained about the chain of forts along this coast. It also mentions that one of these was destroyed in 1808 by captain Jack Aubrey, who featured in the film Master and Commander. This had me showing my military ignorance as I mused over how one would land a ship along here, and anyway, how to destroy a fort. Dodie, a superior admiral, pointed out that you merely needed to shoot it with your cannon from offshore. "Oh, yeah", said I, again improving my education through this travel experience!

The most idyllic part of the day's ride came to an end as we arrived in the vicinity of Marseillan Plage. Here there was traffic, and box stores. But there were also things to like. We liked the way boats were stacked for storage, and we liked the strong way the bike path was protected from the road.

Something that confused us on the bikeway was the pattern of car defeating stanchions. As we would approach these, there was a moment of plotting what our way through would be. And if there were oncoming cyclists, you also had to guess which way they were going to choose.

Near Agde, a really nice man asked if we needed directions. We are always vulnerable to this if we stop just to look at the GPS. We said we were fine and did not want to trouble him. But he said he had nothing better to do, and he wanted to show us a couple of things in the area.

One of the first things was "Chateau Laurens". We followed our new friend there, but we all found that now you had to pay just to even get onto the grounds. So we gave up on that.

Another thing was the so called round lock, where the Canal du Midi and another canal meet. This is apparently quite famous. More of a revelation to me was that we were at the Canal du Midi at all. This is super famous, even with me, but I was blissfully unaware that we had arrived near the darn thing.

The canal that joins the Canal du Midi. Dirt path like you see along this canal (we had followed that here with our guide) is what turned us off on the main canal as a through route. As we later saw, they have fixed that!

St Etienne cathedral in Agde. This is all of Agde we saw.

Our new friend and guide, having taken us to the round lock thought he was setting us off nicely along the Canal du Midi. However, once he was gone, and for reasons I am not quite sure of, we took off instead along the Hereault River. The riverside path was difficult because of tie up posts in the way, so we took to the road. (Come to think of it, maybe we were here because EV 8 is here. If so, why was EV 8 here?).

As we sleazed on down the road, of friend/guide found us. He didn't ask why we were there, but rode along with us for a while.

The river had lots of fishing boats. We thought these looked nicely symmetrical.

Yes, now that I think of it, it was EV8 that was taking us this way. And as a time came that we needed to turn west, to avoid crashing into the sea (follow rivers too much and that will happen), the way was blocked by a "route bareé". So we continued on along the river, with the inevitable consequence that we arrived at the sea. We then began to scout around for a way to go west, but all was blocked by fences and sand dunes, and even forts:

Feeling a little stressed now, we went back to where that route bareé was. How bad could it be?

Eventually we came to where those nasty tall fence panels had been fixed across the way. Whoever did it was really serious, as they strongly wired the panels to the trees.

We briefly considered taking the adjacent field, but there was good reason not to try that:

We got out our pliers and had a go at the wire, but it was too tough for our light duty tool. Instead, I used my hands of steel, and managed to untwist the darn stuff. That got us through one barrier, and onto the worksite.

My bike is not afraid of their Liebherr excavator!

There were actually two more sets of barriers, but Grampies are tough, and brave - when it's Sunday and no workers are about!

We left their wiring and stuff in tatters. We thought they had a lot of gall, to be blocking up a European cycle way with no detour plan and really for no reason.

Our next thing was a very large amusement park. It looked sort of fun, except for roller coasters or anything that went fast or high!

At last we reacquired the Canal du Midi. So unlike what we had found for example in 2013, it was paved and well signed!

Signage was not only directional, but also discussed the engineering of the canal, and things like the fungus problem that had wiped out most of the large Plane trees that had lined the waterway. We could see the replanting with Oak, just where we were, but a panel showed various different species used along the canal.

Only half of the dead trees have been replanted...

We see but have never been able to photograph this guy.

Since this is a canal, it has locks, and lots of rental boats travelling up and down. This one is about to go down.

We arrived at Beziers, but found that extensive rail years blocked us from heading directly to our hotel. This turned out ok, as we skirted around, encountering Bezier's Saint Nazaire cathedral and some of its older and not quite so old bridges.

Lots of cathedral ands bridge scenes follow:

Crossing the bridges earned us the chance to push slowly up steep, but very picturesque, streets - all one way against us.

This is already a wide and flat street. It's hard to take photos while pushing up a narrow and steep one.

We found our Hotel des Poetes, and immediately liked our host/desk man. In the breakfast room, a traditional turntable and amp were playing a pleasant album by someone called Tarana. We later learned that this was the desk man's wife.

And later we got to meet her!:

One of the songs on the album was Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's amazing how something like that (so familiar to us) could easily reach out 8000 km and enter Tarana's repertoire.

We saw that there was a large park immediately adjacent to the hotel, so as soon as we dropped our bags, we went to check it out. It had lovely plantings and fountains, but best of all two ponds, with ducks and geese. I grabbed my camera, to see what we might find.

Here is what we saw. Feel free to correct any of our wild ID's.

The grounds and surroundings of the park were really nice.

In the next pond, the Wood Duck, one of the most stunning.

24233 Wood Duck (seems out of his range - normally found in USA)

When we found the ponds in the park, I scurried back to our room to get the camera. Returning, I passed a group of teenagers, just hanging out, smoking, and listening to music on a cell phone. I was vaguely apprehensive about teenagers, because I was carrying the costly camera just in the open, without a case. Did I need to be apprehensive? Have a look at the shot below and see!

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 3,356 km (2,084 miles)

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