Carcassonne to Arles...

Carcassonne is another European Heritage Site due to its walled citadel. It is entirely given over to tourism so you cannot imagine real people living there anymore. The rest of the town outside the walls contains some fine old houses & a big quay on the Canal du Midi.

Near a religous retreat we are stopped in our tracks. About a dozen nuns in long cream habits are walking in a line through a cornfield. The steady headwind is blowing their cassocks out behind them like sails. Surreal.

We enter the wide valley of the Aude, firstly passing orchards of trellised apple trees, then chateaux & their vineyards. Big estates are called Domaines, smaller ones Mas. The verges are full of wild flowers including masses of poppies & elderflowers. We follow some sections of the Canal du Midi under shady plane trees. The canal verges & wetlands are yellow with flag irises. The canal is busy with boat traffic, identical white hire cruisers, traditional dutch barges & longboats. There are occasional moored houseboats & fishermen with long poles line the banks. The canal towpath is an easy traffic free way for us to dip in to Narbonne & Bezier. Both look worth exploring further another time. We lunch on the shore of an enormous etang (saltwater lake). There are oyster beds & canal boats crossing from Bezier. Sete, opposite, looks like an island joined by a slim causeway.

We are now in the Herault region, & enjoy a visit to Agde where the River Herault is very broad. Further NE. the vineyards we pass advertise their Merlot Noir grape. Many of the lovely stone villages such as Pomerols, have long main streets of large terraced houses with great arched entrances, presumably for carts laden with wine barrels to enter in days gone by. We camp in a charming small site next to vineyards on the edge of the village of Fabregues. We shall remember it as 'Frog' site. We went to sleep to a chorus of frog song, & Sue shared her shower the next morning with a friendly smooth green frog!

Most of the following morning we were alongside the Med. It reminds us of the Costas. Miles of blocks of balconied flats on promenades as La Grande Motte & Le Grau de Roi merge in identical development. Everywhere is busy as its another French bank holiday, May 8th, & the good weather is drawing everybody to the beach. The French seem to have a liking for extending their bank holidays - for many this Thursday off is unofficially extended to next Tuesday!

Near the edge of the Camargue is Aigues-Mortes, a medieval seaport, now miles form the coast due to silting by the Rhone river. In the Camargue we spot a few flamingos, lots of terns & ducks as well as the famous black bulls & horses. Chateaux are now advertising Muscat wine. Local produce is sold along the roadside from large wooden stalls, cherries, asparagus, apples & 'taureau viande'. We camp in the suburbs of Arles near the ancient long Pont de Crau. On the pitch next to us are three young French lady cyclists who are all sharing a teeny-tiny tent. We don't know how they all fit in! There are now some mosquitos about, inevitable in such a wetland area.