Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 43 Frontignan - Marseillan Plage

Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!

(The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!)

- Paul Valéry, Le cimetière marin (1920)

One more day of walking by the sea! 

I began the day walking across Frontignan, taking a brief detour through the town centre before following the Canal du Rhône à Sète for its final kilometres into Sète, where the canal flows into the sea.

The town hall in Frontignan 

A side street

Looking back, leaving town along the canal

Coming out of the town on the canal-side cycling path, I saw a warning sign that I've never seen before: "Industrial risk". Just across the canal was a huge hydrocarbon storage facility! A more detailed sign advised that in the event of a fire or explosion, you should run and take cover in the nearest building. Well that wasn't going to be easy, as the canal headed out into the lagoon, the Étang de Vic... and the nearest buildings were on the other side of the lagoon. 😯 Wondering about the wisdom of building a gigantic hydrocarbon storage facility right beside a fragile lagoon ecosystem - with houses and a school just on the other side - I walked as briskly as I could past the facility and across the lagoon. It smelled like a gas station the whole way! I couldn't help noticing that no flamingoes had chosen to make their home in this part of the lagoon. Intelligent birds! 

Looking back at the storage tanks

I soon reached the other side of the lagoon and followed the cycling path beside the canal into the town, through a semi-industrial area and then past a Lidl supermarket, where I stopped to pick up a few groceries. The parking spaces on the street in front of the supermarket were occupied by a row of vans bearing Moroccan licence plates - a plate I had never seen before! There is a ferry service directly from the port of Sète to Morocco. 

I continued following the canal until it met the Canal de la Peyrade, walking by the water right into the port area and then the town centre. Sète (population 45,000) is built upon and around Mont St Clair, a hill rising at the south-eastern end of the Étang de Thau, an enclosed saltwater lagoon where oysters and mussels are cultivated. The town's network of canals connecting the Étang de Thau with the Mediterranean Sea has earned it the nickname "Venice of Languedoc". Though the town's most famous native, writer and poet Paul Valéry, preferred to refer to his birthplace as L'île singulière: the singular island.

After stopping in at the Office de Tourisme for a stamp on my pilgrim credential, I continued out of town along the waterfront promenade, passing right below the cimetière marin of Paul Valéry's poem, where he himself is buried. At the Plage de la Corniche I found the ideal spot for a picnic. 

Then came the boring part: twelve kilometres walking along a dead straight cycling path, with the beach and the sand dunes on the left and the road, the railway and the lagoon on the right. Not much of a view on either side: the sand dunes were fenced off, with only an occasional beach access path, while on the other side the view was blocked by bamboo canes. 

It never ends...

Someone else didn't much like the cycling path, either! 😅

I tried walking along the beach instead, but it was covered with what looked like gravel but was actually finely crushed seashells. My feet sunk into it and I made slow progress; at the next opportunity I returned to the paved cycling path behind the dunes. 

An interesting series of illustrations showed how the lagoon was formed. According to the information on the panel, the sand that makes up the lido has travelled almost as far as I have: from the Alps, carried by the Rhône to the sea!

Eventually I returned to the beach, just to sit down and take a break; here there were less shells and the sand was firmer, so I continued along the beach for the last five kilometres into Marseillan Plage, where I had booked a room. The town is a beach resort, pretty much dead in November, but this was about as far as I could walk in a day; I couldn't manage another 9 kilometres into Agde, so I ended up here! I've somehow ended up off-stage compared to the towns where I had been planning to start and end my days. But on the other hand, it's not bad ending the day's walk in a place where there's nothing to see: you can just relax and spend the rest of the evening in your room resting, rehydrating, eating (provided you bring supplies with you) - and, of course, writing up this blog! 😄

Frontignan - Marseillan Plage 27 km

Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 42 Palavas-les-Flots - Frontignan

When in doubt, just take the next small step

- Paulo Coehlo, The Pilgrimage (1987)

I had plenty of doubts about today's stage. Walking twenty kilometres along a thin strip of land, with a vast expanse of water on either side? In the rain and blustery wind? It didn't seem like a good idea, somehow. Especially when I woke up at five and heard the wind howling outside my apartment in Palavas-les-Flots. I went back to sleep and when I got up at eight, the rain had stopped and the wind was still blowing, but not so violently. I dressed, made some instant coffee and ate my pastry from the bakery downstairs, then covered myself in waterproofs - against the wind rather than the rain. I headed back into the centre of Palavas and up the Lez, the canal that runs through the town centre to the sea, to the point where it meets the Canal du Rhône à Sète. 

The Canal du Rhône à Sète runs right between two saltwater lagoons, the Étang du Prevost and the Étang de l'Arnel. Its water is kept separate from the salt water by two very narrow strips of land, along one of which is the old towpath, from when barges were towed up and down canals by horses, or men. All the GPS tracks that I had from hikers who had walked this route, and the one that mapy.cz came up with for me, cross the lagoons via this towpath. 

I located the towpath and set off, somewhat dubiously. There were puddles on the path; what if they got bigger, further out? The water was lapping at the edge of the path; what if it came up over the path, way out in the middle of the lagoon?

The path improved somewhat, and I was able to relax and enjoy the sight of flocks of pink flamingoes. But the further out I went, the more uncomfortable I felt about trusting that thin strip of land between the waters. If it had been a calm, sunny day, perhaps, or a Sunday with other walkers and cyclists about... but there was no-one on the path but me, in a strong wind, under a dark and threatening sky. Looking ahead, the path seemed to disappear into the water; was it just the effect of distance? Or not?

About two or three kilometres down the path, I came to the point where this thin stretch of land connects with the Maguelone peninsula. I turned off the path and walked a kilometre out of my way in the hopes of visiting the eleventh-century cathedral of Maguelone, but the gates were shut. However, I noticed a sign indicating that the beach was only 700 metres away, and in the distance I could just see a man walking in that direction, with a dog. Why not walk along the beach instead? I checked my online maps to make sure there was no break in the continuity of the beach - such as bodies of water emptying into the sea - and it looked fine; in seven or eight kilometres I would be at the end of the long, thin strip of land that has the beach on one side, the marshes and the lagoon on the other. Still a strip of land surrounded by water, but wider and more solid! 

What I was supposed to do...

...and what I actually did 

Happy to be back on more solid ground!

It was still rather strange being the only one out there, on that wild and blustery beach. I could see footprints of humans and dogs in the sand that must have been fairly recent, but I hadn't seen a soul since leaving Palavas, except that one dog-walker in the distance. I walked briskly along the beach, stopping only for a brief rest behind a windbreak someone had constructed out of driftwood. When I started walking again, I crossed paths with a person walking in the opposite direction; some time later, I met a woman walking a dog. A sure sign that I was coming closer to places of human habitation! A definite trail appeared across the top of the beach, where the rocks had been trodden into the sand by human feet; then it became a proper trail, along the top of an embankment between the beach and the sand dunes tapering off into the marsh on the lagoon side of the isthmus. 

Panel illustrating the two strips of land through the waters

From the bridge crossing the canal at Aresquiers

This last part of the beach was called Plage des Aresquiers, and my plan for getting from there to Frontignan involved walking through the Bois des Aresquiers nature preserve and past some historic salt flats; it sounded like an interesting route. Plan thwarted: a few hundred metres down the trail through the nature reserve, the path disappeared under huge puddles, with roped-off marshland on either side. 

This was exactly the sort of situation I had been worried about encountering on the canal towpath on that narrow strip of land! But here, it wasn't a problem. I turned back out of the nature reserve and walked an alternative route along roads for the final seven kilometres into town, which was actually a little shorter and offered the additional advantage of taking me past a McDonald's! I had a craving for some junk food, and spent much of the five kilometres that separates the marsh from the fast-food restaurant considering what to order. In France McDonald's is commonly referred to as McD'eau, which makes it sound much classier. And it is: they have waiters, dressed all in black, who bring your food right to the table for you! No standing around waiting for your number to be called. I was happy to place my order, then flop down on a comfy sofa and wait to be served. 

Junk food fix

I was expecting to spend some time on that comfy sofa courtesy of McD'eau, because check-in time at my Airbnb room wasn't officially until five; but when I messaged my hostess, she said I could come over any time. So I walked the final two kilometres to my room, a "studio" separate from but adjacent to the owners' home - it was probably originally their garage - stopping at a bakery along the way to buy a slice of thick pizza for my dinner and a pastry for dessert. 

Another successful day heading westward, across a landscape that is mostly water! One more day by the water, and then I will say goodbye to the sea - until I reach the Atlantic Ocean!

Ultreia! 

Palavas-les-Flots - Frontignan 22.5 km