On the Beach

Since summer was not about to give up yet and hit us today with another blast of Sahara heat, we decided it would be a good day for a drive to the beach. A drive to the beach from here means heading south to Montpelier and then hanging a sharp left to the Mediterranean.

We arrived just about lunchtime so in an effort to find a nice place to eat, we ended up in Aigues-Mortes. This is a delightful medieval town with its fortified gates still encircling the entire old town.


There are lots of eateries here but we always seem to end up in the main square. Today, you can see Dawn had moules/frites, her favourite. Lunch at Restaurant les Voyageurs cost us about 200 Euros less than yesterday’s lunch. To this I say, “There is “food” and there is “cuisine art” - not that you have too much bad food in France.

Just after lunch we noticed this getaway artist. He was snagged immediately after the photo was taken.

From there we drove south along the beach. As you take this drive south from Aigues-Mortes, you quickly discover that there isn't a lot of public access to beaches. There is a lot of private land right up to the water and then there are the salt works of les Salines and the shallow flamingo-infested wetlands just off the shoreline. So you don't hit public beaches until just south of La Grand Motte.


We’ve been down here before at this time of year and most years the beaches have been deserted, but not today. Not only were there lots of sun worshippers, but there were also lots of people in the water. I stuck my toes in and indeed, it was still pretty comfortable for this time of year.

This great beach is just south of the resort town of La Grand Motte shown above, with its funky architecture.
Most of today’s trip was on the autoroute, so it was a pretty quick round trip. Stopping in at the Orange Carrefour on the way back, we discovered that someone decided to do some Sunday shopping yesterday and cleaned out the jewelry store and the nearby tobacco store in the mall. We're thinking the latter was about lottery tickets. Maybe they don’t know about a) guards or b) alarms, because it looked like the thieves had achieved a comprehensive cleanout.
Tonight we finally got together with our Cairanne neighbours the Gardners, who are lawyers hailing from Portland Oregon. Apparently they were in an acquisition mode on this trip because they purchased another property, this one in Mirabel aux Baronnies which will be used as a kind of a time share. Anyway, we had a great visit and meal and drank way too much wine - not a new story.