Montpellier to Meze

Thursday 13th May.
Montpellier to Meze
We were heartily relieved to leave our garret of the last 2 nights as we were feeling quite exhausted. It was not at all comfy and the neighbours were very active for most of the night so we hardly got a wink of sleep! In fact I was so out of sorts at breakfast I didn’t know I had my shirt on inside out! It was great to get the bikes out and escape.
We have chosen to start our homeward journey from here as it is very near the point where we finished the French part of our adventure last November. It is also a particularly flat bit of land so we can break ourselves back in gently. We left town armed with maps of the many bike routes and it was a joy to find ourselves off the roads and onto designated paths again. We went past lots of vineyards,


And suddenly we are back amongst the vines.


the beginning of La Languedociene, and then headed towards the Bassin de Thau, the inland sea which lies between Montpellier and Bezier. There were masses of birds so we covered the land at a very slow rate. Annoyingly I have got water on the inside of my binoculars so only 1 eye works which makes it rather tricky. Amongst the usual ones there were a few surprises including bee eaters - we didn’t think they came this far north, flamingos, cirl buntings and avocets.

Bee Eater sitting on a post!

We also crossed a small stream running into the ‘inland sea’ where a shoal of fish (we later learned were called St L’Eau/Lo?) were feeding in their thousands at the point where the fresh water mixed with the salty lake water.

Feesh!

No one at the spot had a clue as to what they were but the man in the restaurant knew.
The map showed us that there was a cycle route for part of the way to where we were going but as usual we didn’t have much confidence in the map and in any case when we did find the route it wasn’t where they said that it would be! In the meantime we had cycled up a really steep track where at the top sprayed on the road was an arrow saying VTT. Now we know that VTT’s are to be avoided because it stands for Very Tough and Trendy and applies to mountain bikers and not to the likes of us. However as the map said there was a cycle route we took it anyway – bit rough and bumpy but I did get a good photo of the vines on land and the oyster beds out to sea!

Oyster beds - acres and acres of them.

When we eventually came to the end of VTT track we found the normal people’s route about a 100 yds to the north, but we’d never have had so much fun on the latter!
The road into Meze was a dual carriageway so we opted for the coastal route which took us over disused bridges, through tunnels and along a shingle beach but we made it in the end (avoiding some boys playing with explosives) and eventually found our hotel roughly where they said that it would be. (Vivi never ceases to be amazed by the fact that boys are constantly armed with sticks, fireworks, stones, water, high walls, dirt and always seem to be wanting to hit something or break it– to me it all seems fairly normal!)
Meze’ claim to fame is that it is a major oyster producer, and there is a pretty old fishing port too.