Riding to Sete

After I dropped the kids at school this morning, I got on my bike to head toward the Mediterranean town of Sete.  I wasn't sure how far it was, so I decided to ride for an hour out before turning around.  In fact, it turned out that Sete was almost exactly an hour away and instead of riding on a dirt road by the railway tracks as I had expected, it was a two lane paved bike path all the way.


Bike path to the hill town of Sete

In my world, it was stunning.  The entire way from Marseillan-Plage (the beach town that shares its name with our home of Marseillan-Ville) to Sete there is uninterrupted beach along the south side.  That's about 20 km of sand.  The bike path itself is bordered by stick fencing to hold the sand back and tall grasses.  Being the end of February, the path is not yet swarmed with beach-goers, though I can see that it will be in a few months.



Sand dunes on the Mediterranean

The best part, however, after 60 minutes of hard peddaling (I was determined to get all the way to Sete in a hour once I realized it was achieveable) was when I turned around and discovered that for a large part of the path, the snow capped Pyrenees are in view. 







 The view from Sete toward Marseillan plage - squint for mountains

First trip on the Canal du Midi

Emily has been complaining about her bicycle, so we decided to spend our Saturday in search of something better.  Since it was a lovely spring day, we decided to take the boat out of the marina and down the Canal du Midi just as far as the first lock which is just before the town of Agde.  From there the bicycle shop is less than a kilometer away. 


Marseillan from the water

Marseillan from the Etang

One of several sad boats along the canal

A fixer upper for me

Looking along the Canal du Midi to the Etang du Thau






Exploring the Countryside

Since my new life started last week, I have spent a considerable amount of time on my bicycle.  First there was a trip to Bessan, which involves a little bit of up and downhill cycling, and a good deal of attention to vehicles when the road becomes one lane with two way traffic bordered by tall trees.  When we did this in the car, we clocked it at 15 km, which is a bit of a hike to get to the grocery store, but gives us the option of several different kinds of gluten free bread.



Pyrenees in the distance - I didn't realize they were so close!



Beautiful until a car comes along











One of the highlights of this trip the first time I did it was reaching the crest of a small hill and realizing that what I could see off in the distance to the south was the Pyrenees.  Those are some very serious looking rocks! 





Blossoms on Almond trees along the road to Agde

Bessan's supermarket has a gluten free section, but so do both the supermarkets in Agde, so I tried Agde next.  My first attempt took me along the Canal du Midi on a dirt path that I gave up on after a kilometer or two.  My second attempt was a circuitous route that took me along a proper bicycle path at the side of a highway.  This landed me in Agde at the BioCoop which supplied me with gluten free baking mix as well as tamari, the wheat free version of soya sauce. 

Knowing where I was going on the way home shortened the ride from about 90 minutes to a mere 40.  Later the same day, however, someone told me about a much more direct and fairly safe path which we investigated on the kids' Wednesday off school. The road used to be the railway line which was apparently taken out of use in the 1950s.  Now it is a paved lane that runs perfectly straight and close enough to the highway that most vehicles just take the highway.  This makes it reasonably safe for cycling on with the kids.  In a few places there were blossoming trees at the side of the road that I later found out are almond trees.  We also cycled past a load of vineyards and some good looking olive groves.  It is still jacket weather, but very much like spring here.

I revisited the road to Agde the next day and found that without kids I can get all the way to Agde in just 20 minutes, but then I got thoroughly lost trying to find a supermarket.  I gave up after about 30 minutes of wandering and headed back to Marseillan and will return another time with a google map.

On my return I wandered off the beaten path, through the vineyards around town.

Around Marseillan



Rooftops of Marseillan

Wednesdays are a day off school in Marseillan.  Last week, Georgia, her friend Sofia and I walked around town hoping to get a better sense of the layout of the place.  In typical old European form, the streets in the centre of town are only one car wide (though usually open to two way traffic) and are anything but straight.  The houses on each “block” are conjoined though there is occasionally a space between rows of houses that might be wide enough to let a person pass, though not wide enough for a horse - maybe 24 inches.  In this particular town, most of the streets are paved. Only the very centre which houses the shops and market are cobbled.  

Great door and vine

 


Tile used as exterior trim - cool

Typical street in Marseillan



The opposite side of our street

Market day in Marseillan-Ville is Tuesday and in Marseillan-Plage it's on the weekend.  In Marseillan-Ville in addition to a few food stands there are a couple of dozen clothing stands.  For the most part, the goods are more dollar-store than hand-crafted though there are some exceptions.  The Sunday market at Marseillan-Plage is mostly a giant yard sale with a huge number of individuals selling whatever they're trying to get rid of plus a few vendors selling antiques and a small food market. 

From our house it is exactly 150 meters into the market square where there is a small supermarket in addition to a butcher, produce vendor and a couple of bakeries as well as a pharmacy, hairdresser, and pizza place.  Less than a kilometer away there is a larger supermarket that has a small gluten free section in addition to a walmart type of selection of household stuff. 




Within the town, but outside the market square there is a hardware store, bank, and a few other shops but little in the way of clothing or shoe stores.   For clothes, shoes, and bicycle gear we'd need to go to Agde, a slightly larger town a ten minute drive away. 

There are restaurants scattered around town with the majority placed along the port where the tourists hang out.  There are also multiple vintners which we have yet to investigate.



I was fully prepared to dock the boat at a small town on the Rhone called Condrieu sur Roche (or something to that effect) but Tom was keen to make it closer to the Mediterranean and in the end we seem to have landed somewhere that is just right for us!

 

Gorges du Tarn in the Central Massif

Last Friday we rented a car so that we could wander a little further afield and get a better sense of our surroundings.  On Sunday we drove up into the Central Massif in order to go along the Gorges du Tarn. 

About an hour from our home base in Marseillan we arrived at Clermont-l'Herault where the road climbs steeply up one of the hills that forms the south side of the Massif.  (My post excursion google let me know that the Massif is a bunch of mountain ranges that cover 15% of the country and are largely comprised of extinct volcanos).  After reaching the peak and driving along the plateau, we descended into a valley in which sat the city of Millau.  After pausing to check out the view, we drove down the switch backs and started along the Tarn river.


Looking down on the town of Millau

In many spots, the road goes along the Tarn down near the water, and you get views of clusters of stone houses that comprise the villages along the river.  In other spots, however, the road follows the river way up high and you get views down into the gorge.  My fear of heights combined with the minimalist nature of French roads made this a scary adventure, but well worth it on account of the views. 



One of many lovely towns along the Gorge

 

That said, at the town of La Malene, I'd had enough, Georgia was sleeping away her car sickness, and Emily was bored in the way only Emily can be, so we headed back into the massif to find our way home. 



A town where buildings seem to grow out of the rock

This part of the drive was remarkable for the number of changes in scenery and I'm sorry I don't have photos of each distinct region.  On some of the very high plateaus the land is pretty dry and just dotted with scrubby trees.  Then there were sections that looked like any pine forest at home, and other sections were comprised of rolling fields. 




It was all very beautiful until we came to the world's tallest bridge (check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct) which was an experience I'd rather not talk about.   

Sadly, on a Sunday in February very little was going in the villages we drove through.  The one exception was the market in Bessan which we stumbled upon due to a missed turn off.  This town is only 15 km from Marseillan and the road, though narrow, doesn't seem to be used much so I hope to be able to check it out by bicycle.


Catch Up

Way back in October, at the point when we had finished climbing the locks of the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne, I fully intended to write a blog post wittily entitled “All Downhill from Here” .  By then we had gone up approximately 144 locks and reached the town of Langres, a fortified city on a hill near the source of multiple rivers. (Fortunately, our friends Ted and Joan from Peterborough had met up with us at a town called Chaumont and were willing crew during many of these locks. )   At Langres we tied up and hiked up to the medieval town on the hill.  I can only say that after all the locks and the one kilometer walk into town, almost straight uphill, I was too tired to write a post.  That’s a less impressive excuse, however, when I admit that after reaching the pinnacle, Joan and the girls and I did a lot of very gentle cycling as we started to head down the waterway and Ted and Tom did most of the locking.  In any case, I failed to write then and am only just picking up the thread again now, four months later.

In brief, after our great ascent, we started the descent down the other side of the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne, met up with the Soane , took it until it merged with the Rhone, took the Rhone to the bottom of France, headed west  toward the Canal du Midi, found out that the canal would close in a few days’ time (much to our surprise), parked ourselves at a town called Marseillan, enjoyed the beach on the Mediterranean for about a week (25 degrees celcius on November 7), flew home to enjoy Canadian medical care and apply for long term visas, flew back ten weeks later, and are now living in an ancient house in the centre of the town of Marseillan where the children are attending school.

The task of recounting memorable moments and sights over the journey to the south of France is too daunting at the moment, so for the sake of getting something posted, I’ll skip to the present for now and go back in time later. 

The town we’ve landed in is called Marseillan, not to be confused with the metropolis of Marseille which is a few hundred kilometers to the east.  We are just 150 km north of the border between France and Spain, on a salt water “lake” of sorts that is separated from the sea by a thin strip of land on the south east side.  The lake, actually called an étang, is just under 20 km long and supports a lot of boating activity, especially sailing, as well as oyster cultivation.  Our boat is safely moored at the town harbour, in front of a string of boat and sail shops, across from both a winery and a brewery, only a few hundred meters from the centre of town. There is even an aluminum boatbuilding shop on the edge of town where they build workboats similar to those from Metalcraft.  What are the chances?

Marseillan has a population of about 4000 people which supports an elementary school of about 250 kids.   Since we cannot start boating until the Canal du Midi reopens in mid-March, we have enrolled the girls in school and for the coldest months (currently between 12 and 15 degrees during the day and between 5 and 10 overnight) we have rented a house.  The boat is liveable during this type of winter but a little too wet to be really comfortable. 

Georgia is enrolled in the equivalent of grade three, in a class that happens to contain an American girl who has been here since September and has learned enough French to be Georgia’s translator until her own French develops a little more.  Emily is in the equivalent of grade five, a year below her age mates because grade six is contained at a different school and seemed unnecessarily ambitious given that our primary educational goal is learning French.  She has a pretty good foundation from Madelle’s excellent instruction at Marysville and is also keen to practice on DuoLingo on a regular basis (excellent free online language instruction – check it out at www.duolingo.com).  We accompany the girls on the three minute walk to school to start at 9:00 in the morning and pick them up again for a two hour lunch break from noon ‘til 2:00.  Then they return for the afternoon from 2:00 to 5:00.  For reasons we don’t quite understand, the school week is only four days long with Wednesdays off as well as the weekends.  They have a shorter summer break, but more frequent and longer breaks during the year than in Ontario.  For instance, the winter term goes from the start of the new year to the start of March when they get a two week break.  Then they go back for six weeks before they get another two week break.  In that session, Emily’s class takes a TEN day ski trip in the Pyrenees!!!!   (I may need to be medicated for this!)

Tom and I are now on our second day of life in France with six parenting-free hours a day.  It looks like Tom will fill this time fairly completely with Metalcraft Marine via the internet.  I will roam the countryside on my bicycle, trying find the routes that are least threatening to my continuing existence.  From the port in Marseillan it is possible to ride 6km to the beach (Marseillan Plage on the Mediterranean) almost entirely on car-free paths.  That’s it, however, for truly safe cycling.  We rented a car for four days over the last week in order to explore the area around us and discovered that the roads are very narrow and often fall at the sides into drainage ditches without so much as a foot of paved or gravelled shoulder.  As a result, my cycling tours will be an effort to find the less travelled routes where there just isn’t very much car traffic.

No doubt there’s a great deal more that I could say, but I’ll leave it at that for now and see if I can get the other writers in the family to add their bits.