Exploring the Hérault Valley

We have taken advantage of the sun the past week to explore some of the area around Montpellier. We started on a sunny Boxing Day, driving to Servian, where a member of my Tuesday morning walking group from Victoria, and her husband, are staying for a month. We drove to Le Cap d'Agde, which proved to be a beach resort that was somewhat empty, but with some beautiful views of the Mediterranean Sea. We found a place, in the sun, out of the wind, for a coffee and decided to drive to the little town of Marseillan. We saw a number of barges that had either come down the Rhone or from the Canal de Midi, to winter. Seeing these, sitting in the sun, enjoying some tapas was a lovely way to spend some time. The town also had an animated, life sized nativity scene, that included a display of oyster farming.

We returned to Servian, saw the house that Elaine and Brian were renting (from a Victoria couple), bought a loaf of bread and headed back to Montpellier, hoping to do most of the driving before it became pitch black. Getting out of town was not a problem, but an exit taken too early, had us going about 45 minutes out of our way. Quite funny actually. But, we now feel comfortable enough with roads coming into Montpellier that we had no problem navigating our way home. Much of our comfort level is due to all the cycling we did at the beginning of this trip. I found myself saying to Les "Haven't we cycled here before? And weren't we lost then?"

Yesterday we drove north of Montpellier to St. Martin de-Londres, driving through many small towns and stopping on the way in Le Mas-de-Londres, where we walked through the new town and noticed that someone had NOT taken care of their vines.......

and then drove up to the old town, on the hill, with the church (why are the churches always up on top of the hill? Ask any pilgrim ;-)) There were absolutely no services at all in the old town, but the new town was bustling with restaurants and an Intermarché (grocery store). Saint Martin-de-Londres, a few km down the road, was a wonderful surprise. A lovely square with several restaurants and a then, up cobblestone roads, and under arches, a lovely church.

We stopped at one of the restaurants for lunch. The 'plat' was 9.95€. What could go wrong? The choices were:

Andouillette, frites, salad

Boudin noir, frites, salad

Cerfs grillés, pasta, salad

We were unsure as to what exactly these were, although I concluded that the cerfs, must be some sort of fish as they had a tank with lobsters about 3 metres from our table. The waitress spoke no English, so the manager came over and did a bit of a charades, saying sausage and pointing to the large veins on the inside of his arm. Right......blood sausage. Move on. Then, his finger moving back and forth like a hairpin highway, on his belly. Right...intestines. So that left the fish. Not so fast. Cerfs is deer/venison/bambi. We thought that would be okay, even though I'm not much of a meat eater. The size of steak was like a NY strip, which Les and I would normally split. So I managed less than one cubic inch as it's very rich. The salad, bread and coffee were great. I had to explain that it was too much meat for me, but very tasty. Les managed almost all of his.

We continued on our drive north to Ganges, where we stopped for a walk around town, a view of the church and yet another fabulous animated nativity scene. This one had local interest as well; people painting, shepherds, blacksmiths, knitters and weavers, all about 5" tall and everything moving. We then crossed over the Hérault River and came south to St. Guilhem-le-Desert and Aniane. Because it was getting late, we had no time to stop, so these two towns will be left for another day, perhaps on foot as they are on the Camino from Arles.

We're off the Museum again today, using our annual pass. Here are a sample of the other cards we've gathered on our trip.