We are camped at Villemarin, approximately half way between the towns of Marseillan and Mèze. Our French neighbour, spotting our bikes, asked if we’d done the circuit of the Basin de Thau, which, he said, was about 60 kms. Arghh! “No”, we replied.
The route would go something like this: Villemarin to Mèze, on round the basin to Sète, thence down the long coastal sandbar to Marseillan Plage, up to Marseillan itself, then back to our campsite at Villemarin.
Enter Francine. Whilst in Mèze she’d spotted a relatively new navettes [ferry] which plugs between Mèze and Sète. The boat ride is 30 minutes and takes bikes as well as foot passengers. I could see it coming.
Naturally a brilliant idea formed in her head. We’d do the 10 kms to Mèze, clamber on the ferry to Sète, make our way a few kms through Sète, followed by the 14 kms down the sandbar to Marseillan Plage Lastly, about 6 kms would get us back up to Marseillan where we could refresh ourselves appropriately before finishing the last 6 kms to our campsite.
Off we set for the 10:40 ferry. Being one of the market days in Mèze , most of the traffic should be coming into Mèze rather than leaving.
The Mèze embarkation side is great – nice and flat. Disembarking in Sète is less than ideal, there’s a concrete staircase up which you have to man-handle your e-bikes complete with batteries; not easy especially when some dozy cow is blocking the exit gate wating to board. The helpful ferry man lugged Francine’s bike up the narrow steps for her. What he should have done was ram the handlebars into the dozy cow,
We started working our way through Sète, partly walking, partly riding. It was manic. You basically have to cross the town from north to south to get towards the sandbar. We found an accommodating bar for a well-earned couple of beers.
Signage for the cycle track was sometimes good and sometimes non-existent. Despite this, after a few head-scratching moments, we finally found ourselves on the 14kms concrete track along the sandbar heading towards Marseillan Plage.
They have a done a splendid job of restoring the sand dunes between the track and the sea. They’ve done such a good job that you can’t actually see the sea; all you can see is the concrete cycle track. It was 14kms of dreary tedium.
At long last we arrived at Marseillan Plage and, since it’s not our natural habitat, made our way back up to civilization in Marseillan itself by 13:30, where we managed to share three tapas dishes for lunch washed down by a bottle of Picpoul de Pinet – after an initial beer to slake the thirst..
We repeated our by now well trodden path back to Villemarin. The Police Municipale were all over a huge itinerant encampment which had recently established itself on the edge of Marseillan. Go fellas!
We can say that we’ve done at least most of the cycle route but we wouldn’t bother again.
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