Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 45 Portiragnes - Béziers

Je ne marche pas pour rajeunir ou éviter de vieillir, pour me maintenir en forme ou pour accomplir des exploits. Je marche comme je rêve, comme j’imagine, comme je pense par une sorte de mobilité de l’être et de besoin de légèreté.

(I don't walk to regain my youth, or to avoid growing old, to keep in shape or to accomplish something. I walk just as I dream, just as I imagine, just as I think, to achieve a sort of mobility of being and respond to a need for lightness.)

- Georges Picard, Le Vagabond approximatif (2001)

A short walk today - twelve kilometres along the Canal du Midi. And then another nine kilometres exploring Béziers!

The canal path may be monotonous, especially in dull weather, but it is not entirely without interest. It has occasional attractive features - such as locks, bridges, barges/houseboats, and giant earthworms!

The latest new candidate in the "longest earthworm on the Camino" contest!

😅

At the Port de Plaisance or marina of Béziers, I stopped in a café for a miniature quiche and an end-of-stage beer - though it wasn't even noon yet! I had planned a short stage partly because it was supposed to rain, and partly because I wanted the afternoon free to explore the city. It was only noon when I called the hospitalier at Gíte Bon Camino to tell him I was at the door. After about fifteen minutes he rode up on his bike, let me into the hostel, took down my details and showed me around. I was as usual the only one staying in the pilgrim hostel, and probably the last of the season: number 981 this year, according to the registry! I wasted no time in the hostel but headed off to explore the town, clutching a ragged map on which the hostel volunteers had marked out their recommended route. 

The Béziers area has been inhabited since Neolithic times, and a Greek colony was established on the site in 575 BC, making it the second-oldest city in France, after Massilia (Marseille); the city was originally named Rhôde, after the homeland of the colonists. The Romans refounded the city around the year 36 BC as Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum, a colony of veterans of the Seventh Legion located on the Via Domitia road linking Italy with Spain. Remains of the Roman amphitheatre are still visible, and the floor mosaic of a Roman house was uncovered during renovation of Béziers' covered market, Les Halles, in 2024.

The city was conquered by the Muslims in AD 720 and remained part of Islamic Iberia until 752. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries the viscounts of Béziers ruled the coastal plain around the city and controlled the east-west road through the Languedoc region, which roughly followed the route of the Roman Via Domitia. 

I started my exploration by crossing not the old bridge, but the adjacent road bridge, so that I could take pictures of the medieval bridge beside it. Then I located the elevator and series of walkways leading up to the cathedral at the top of the town.

The Romanesque cathedral that was built starting in the eighth century, on the site of a Roman temple, is no longer there. It was destroyed on July 22, 1209, set on fire by Crusaders, so that the roof and much of the cathedral collapsed on the people inside, killing thousands of men, women and children who had taken refuge in the church.

Crusaders, killing Christians, in a church? This is what happened during the "Albigensian Crusade" of 1209 - 1229, the only crusade ever to be called against a Christian sect. Pope Innocent III called the crusade, in agreement with the French king, against the heretical reformist sect of the Cathars, also known as the Albigensians because of the popularity of the movement in the area centring around the town of Albi. As usual, religion offered as an excuse to start a war that actually had political motives: maintaining the dominance of the north of France over the south. 

Though the Cathar beliefs were, admittedly, pretty radical. In a reaction against the scandalous and dissolute Catholic clergy of the day, the Cathars sought a return to the Christian message of perfection, poverty and preaching. But unlike other twelfth-century reformers such as Saint Francis, they rejected the physical, material world as entirely sinful, created not by God but by an evil force they called Rex Mundi, to lead us astray from the ideal of a purely spiritual life. The word "Cathar" comes from the Greek katharos, meaning "clean" or "pure", and the Cathar ideal would have been to live as pure spirit; all connections with the material world, such as eating, were considered unclean. Marriage and sex were particularly evil because they produced new human beings, perpetuating the cycle of souls being trapped in an impure bodily existence. The Cathars believed in two equal and opposed forces: a God who was pure spirit, and the evil Rex Mundi, ruler of the material world. 

The Cathars rejected not only the authority of the Pope and the clergy, but all forms of worldly government, refusing to obey the law, swear oaths or perform military service. It's no wonder then that they were impopular with the authorities, of both church and government! The Cathar movement gained the most ground in the Languedoc region, also known as Occitania, an area that didn't really consider itself a part of France, being linguistically and culturally closer to Catalonia than to northern France. Occitanian cities were particularly cosmopolitan and enjoyed a fair degree of religious freedom; Jews and dissident groups such as the Cathars and the Waldesians were tolerated, and while Muslims did not enjoy the same freedom, Islamic literature and scholarship were known and respected. The cities of the south enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity, and were viewed with suspicion and unease by the rulers of the north of France. 

When Innocent III was elected Pope in 1198, he resolved to deal with the Cathars, sending a delegation of friars to the province of Languedoc to assess the situation. It was found that the Cathars of Languedoc were not showing proper respect for the authority of the French king or the Catholic Church, and that their leaders were being protected by the local nobles, who had a clear interest in maintaining their independence from the king. Innocent III made an attempt at dealing with the situation diplomatically, sending a number of Cistercian monks to preach to the Cathars and bring them back into the fold, but with a few exceptions their mission failed. In the end, Innocent III declared a crusade against the Cathars, and Papal legate Arnaud Amalric, Abbot of Cîteaux Abbey, assumed command of the enterprise.

The Crusaders marched first on Béziers, a city with a strong Cathar community, and laid siege to the town, demanding that the Catholics come out of the city and the Cathars surrender. When both groups refused to obey, the Crusaders slaughtered the entire population of Béziers, estimated at 15,000 to 20,0000 people, and burnt the city to the ground. 

It is said that the Crusaders asked their commander, the Pope's representative Abbot Arnaud Amalric, how to distinguish between Catholics and Cathars, seeing as they looked the same. He replied Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius: "Kill them all. God will know which are his."

The city, and the cathedral, of Béziers were rebuilt beginning in 1215. Only a few details of the original Romanesque construction survived, but the cathedral begun in 1215 is an excellent example of Gothic architecture in southern France. 

Having visited the cathedral, I spent the rest of the afternoon happily wandering around the town centre. The city reminded me of Montpellier, but on a smaller scale.

Christmas decorations were going up in many parts of the city: a sight I have never seen on a Camino before! And they looked really out of place on a sunny afternoon with a temperature of around twenty degrees! But the days are getting shorter, and so I soon made my way back to the pilgrim hostel, with supplies for an early dinner. 

Portiragnes - Béziers 12 km

(+ 9 km wandering around the town!)

Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 44 Marseillan Plage - Portiragnes

We have nothing to invest in a walk; it is too slow, too cheap. We crave the astonishing, the exciting, the far away, and do not know the highways of the gods when we see them.

- John Burroughs, Exhilarations of the road (1923)

The scenery is definitely less exciting in this part of France than on the Via Domitia between the Alps and Arles. Flat land means easier walking, physically speaking; but the challenge becomes mental, as anyone will know who has walked the Mesetas in Spain, or the plains of the Po Valley in Italy. Yesterday's twelve-kilometre cycling path is a case in point. So is the towpath along the Canal du Midi, which I could have walked all day today, and will be walking all day tomorrow. 

I started the day following the cycling route out of Marseillan Plage, a bit of a ghost town in November: I passed a marina, an amusement park and a campground, all deserted. Then I reached the Canal du Midi and walked along a dirt track beside it, turning off the canal and onto a small road when I reached the outskirts of Agde.

The end of the Canal du Midi, where it flows into the Étang de Thau

Looking upstream along the canal

Agde: aerial view (in the tourist office)

Agde is one of the oldest towns in France, founded in the fifth century BC by Greek colonists from Massilia (Marseille) under the name Agathe Tyche, meaning "good fortune". A fourth-century BC bronze sculpture that had been lost in a shipwreck, the Ephebe of Agde, was found buried in silt in the river Hérault in 1964; it is now displayed in the archaeological museum, which is unfortunately neither in the town centre nor on my route, so I didn't see it.

In ancient times, and up until the eighteenth century, the inlet at the mouth of the river Hérault was the most important trading port in the Occitanian region of the Mediterranean. The port lost its importance when tall sail ships were replaced by motor merchant ships, and the town became primarily an agricultural and wine-growing centre.

Agde is situated on an 800,000 year-old volcano, source of the distinctive black basalt used in buildings such as the cathedral of Saint Stephen, built in the 12th century to replace a 9th-century Carolingian edifice which was in turn built on the foundations of a fifth-century Roman church.

All this black stone gave the town a somewhat gloomy air, on a grey November day. But in one square just around the corner from the cathedral, the atmosphere has been lightened by painting colourful façades and shutters onto what is actually a plain and featureless wall over a parking lot! 

Having obtained my stamp from the tourist information office, where I rested on a comfy sofa for a while watching a video about the history of the town, I visited the cathedral and then decided it was too early to have lunch in Agde, where most of the businesses seemed to be closed anyway - I later realised it was Armistice Day, an official holiday. I decided that rather than follow the course of the Canal du Midi for the rest of the day, I would cut across country to the village of Vias and get some lunch there. So I asked Mapy.cz to recommend a pedestrian route through Vias to Portiragnes.

Pont St. Joseph 

The route it came up with followed the Canal du Midi for a while, passing by the Écluse Ronde, locks built in a circular shape to allow boats to turn around inside, which I didn't really look at properly or photograph because I was too busy looking at the spooky abandoned building next door! 😅 I passed an old bridge and continued until the bridge on which highway D912 crosses the canal. I went up onto the bridge and walked two kilometres beside the highway into Vias; after the first kilometre, which had a broad grassy verge, it became an urban road with a sidewalk and a low speed limit. In fact, a low speed limit enforced by a traffic light - an excellent idea! If the approaching vehicle is detected to be travelling faster than 50 km/h, the light turns red. No-one gets fined, but the car has to stop, and when it starts up again it will be going slower! Another idea to add to my growing list of good ideas from France, which I started yesterday, with lockers on public beaches. You put your valuables in a locker and take the key swimming with you - it's on a wristband. Two simple, inexpensive ideas, of public utility!

Vias turned out to be the perfect place to stop for lunch. The village had a much more cheerful feel than Agde, despite being largely built out of the same black volcanic stone. There were plenty of cafés and restaurants, with outdoor seating, ranging from burger, pizza and kebab places to fancy seafood restaurants... I chose a wine bar and ordered a couple of tapas with a glass of the local white. 

When I got moving again, I decided against walking an extra kilometre to rejoin the Canal du Midi, but followed the main road out of town. Before it got too big to walk on, I turned off onto a dirt track through the vineyards, then a small and little-used paved road appropriately but unimaginatively called Chemin de Portiragnes à Vias. And in fact this road took me all the way into Portiragnes, though not by the most scenic of routes; it passed by a light industrial zone and then a closed campground and caravan park. Soon I was in Portiragnes letting myself into my Airbnb flat, which has a washer/dryer! All my clothes are now clean and sweet-smelling, and none of them appear to have shrunk in the dryer... not even my puffy jacket, or my merino wool socks and T-shirts! As soon as I had enough clean and dry clothes to be able to go out decently covered, I walked about 50 metres to the local Carrefour supermarket, which is open despite the holiday and carries a large selection of ready-made microwaveable meals - another excellent idea worth copying from the French! 

Marseillan Plage - Portiragnes 22 km