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.
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| The town hall in Frontignan |
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| A side street |
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| It never ends... |
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| 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.
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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
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