Étang de Thau and Agde

B came over early in the morning with some dark sheets of film so that we could observe the transit of Venus. I'm not sure what we actually saw because the dot of Venus was so small against the sun and the orientation didn't match the diagrams that B had brought along. Then I had breakfast and accompanied B to the town to get his breakfast. He bought some bread and bananas at the market.

Here is a view of a canal by daylight. In the background are the slopes of Mont St. Clair. As you can see it was glorious weather. (Note from the future: Sète and its canals formed the backdrop for the award winning French film The Secret of the Grain years after my visit.)

We walked to La Plagette which is on the southern shore of Étang de Thau. This lake is a coastal lake separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land upon which Sète is built. The main canal of Sète links the lake with the sea. The intriguing geography was one of the reasons I had wanted to visit. The lake is a rich source of fish and shellfish, and also used for recreational sailing. We saw where the canal meets the lake from a small village on the eastern bank.

Then we went to the train station where I made my sleeper reservation for a few days later. We caught the train for a few kilometres west to visit the town of Agde.

Not far from the station is where the Canal du Midi terminates by entering L'étang de Thau. The canal forms part of a water route between Toulouse and Sète, i.e. the Atlantic and Mediterranean, avoiding the transport of goods around the Iberian Peninsula. It has a fascinating history, but you'll have to follow the hyperlinks to delve further.

Today the canal is used for canal cruises, including self-hire ones. Bicycles are provided with the bateau so you can stop at scenic spots and tour the surrounding countryside a bit on bike. Then you take your dinner at some rustic French restaurant and retire for the night on your boat without having to worry about being breath tested. It must have been a series of Global Village programs on this canal that piqued my interest in this part of France.

Then we walked to the old city and explored it a bit. We lunched at a Moroccan eatery; I had a merguez sandwich. I remarked that Mediterranean cities would be more attractive if there were no dog shit on the pavements. Agde is not by the sea. For that we would have had to travel to Cap d'Agde. It has naturist resorts, and we weren't into that so we had no intentions to go there.

After a siesta, we took an evening walk along Promenade du Maréchal Leclerc to the small centre of La Corniche. The road hugs the seaside and passes the port of Sète.

The area is attractively landscaped and obviously a holiday retreat. I wondered if it was more affordable than Côte d'Azur. I supposed that even if were, if it became more well-known, prices would become comparable.

On our return to Sète, we accepted the blandishments of one of the numerous restaurants and had a seafood dinner. I had a meal of mussels. We had good conversation over the table and then called it a night, agreeing to meet tomorrow morning to ascend Mont St. Clair.

Sète

The grandkids were very reluctant to let me go. Their father was away, and it had been a long time since they had an adult who would push them on the swing, whirl them around till they were dizzy, etc. My cousin had grandkids; that made me feel old. His wife fed me a filling breakfast of noodles with beef and fish balls for the journey.


I had a first class seat (which went by the marketspeak of Comfort 1, there were no uncomfortable seats, just degrees of comfort) on Thalys with the perk of restauration à la place (meal served in the seat). It was quite tasty actually. I felt happier about the 22€ supplement it cost me. There were no classic white departure schedules at Rotterdam, nor at Paris Nord. Electronic automation was taking over. Train travel was getting more like plane travel, anodyne but flavourless.


From Gare du Nord I caught a metro to Gare de Lyon. I wanted to book my sleeper for a later segment but all the counters were closed. Was it the D-Day holiday or what? It turned out later that an electricity union was en grève (on strike), cutting power to many trains in Paris. I waited from 1320 to 1520. The platform was announced close to departure time, like with planes, then everybody got onto the TGV. I might have been lucky that the TGV service wasn't affected. We didn't seem to be travelling very fast, perhaps 140 km/h. The TGV seemed to be the normal intercity train now, only locals served regional destinations.

The Languedoc-Roussillon region of France is less well known than the Côte d'Azur, but also has a Mediterranean climate, and Catalan culture, hence my curiosity about it. At that moment I was about 200 km from where I had been only a few days before, and I had gone all the way back to the Netherlands only to return. I sure had concocted a strange itinerary. My justification was that I had to transit Barcelona to visit the Canary Islands and why not see the Costa Brava while I was there. Then I needed a new region in France to visit and I was curious about Languedoc-Roussillon. Also I wanted to be an overnight train ride away from Geneva, and this was as far away as I could go to get enough sleep. And then I looked at my trajectory on the map and wow, how weird.

Sète with its port and canal, looked just as I had anticipated from my research. It did look a bit seedy. The hostel was halfway up a hill and it was quite tiring getting there. My German friend B, whom I had arranged to meet and travel for a few days together, turned up while I was having dinner. He was staying in a hotel in the port. We walked down there to have a drink and a chat. The canals give Sète the appellation Venice of Languedoc.

Just like in Girona there were noisy scooters roaming the streets in the evening, and this was a Monday. However the night air was soft, and the town did not feel sinister at all.


We had an early night. B was still recovering from a recent trip to Myanmar. Something smelt in the hostel room. Perhaps it was the port itself.