Avignon to Frontignan, 31 July – 2 August

Petit Rhône, Canal du Rhône à Sète, L’Étang de Thau: 

Fourque-all mooring, screwed at Saint-Gilles, celebration in Carnon, hello l’Etang de Thau

About 13km from Vallabregues, the last lock on the Rhône, we entered the Petit Rhône.

Vallebregues, last lock on the Rhône River before we entered the Petit Rhône

We’d only planned to go to Fourques, but finding fourque-all mooring there (sorry),  continued downstream through the Saint-Gilles lock and turned off the river up the Canal du Rhône à Sète to the town of Saint-Gilles.

After passing a trio of free “nature” moorings en route to the town, all occupied (one of them by our Dutch friends on Lady Jane), we found a place on the Quai du Canal, to our relief. It was just before the port de plaisance proper, which starts on the other side of the bridge. It had no facilities – no water, no electricity, and the office was too far away for us to get the wi-fi – but that didn’t stop the attractive young capitaine from charging us the full €38 for the night. Putain!

Saint-Gilles has a big Le Boat hire-boat depot
… and this attractive duck (goose?)

Saint-Gilles’ medieval scruffiness has a certain architectural charm, especially in the details above the doors. Not so the population, mainly male and variously shifty-looking; I wouldn’t have felt comfortable walking around alone.

Interesting architectural details above a door in Saint-Gilles…

 

Promising, but there was no sign at all of life, let alone wine

The Canal du Rhône à Sète is not always a pretty canal – you’ve got the scrub and the dust of the Camargue, and for quite a long stretch you can’t see the étangs (lakes) on one or both sides because of the banks being built up.

Colourful holiday cottages on the Canal de Rhône à Sète
White horses of the Camargue
White hotel ship of the Camargue

Brightly painted fishing shacks and the occasional cluster of Camargue horses liven things up a bit. And, from sights like the one below, it’s clear that money is going into maintaining and improving the infrastructure.

Here we’re squeezing past a couple of barges doing some dredging work

After finding a space at the quai at Carnon, we found it was controlled by boat-hire company Canalous, whose lady boss exercised her admittedly advertised right to deny us mooring for the night (€15 if you can get it) – though there seemed to be plenty of space. A couple of hundred metres further, however, we got lucky in front of a Dutch couple on a boat moored to some sturdy wooden fencing on a new concrete quai in front of a row of houses.

Behind the houses, over what seemed to be a dried-up lake, and through a holiday development, we found – the Mediterranean Sea!

Saying hello to the Med, after two months on the waterways of France!

So, at a big, brand-new beach bar with cocktails at Singapore prices, we toasted our achievement with a couple of Heinekens. It’s taken us exactly two months to travel from Calais, at the very top of France, to the Med in the south.

Mediterranean beach bar at Carnon

Frontignan 

Trying to time it right for the lift bridge at Frontignan – it opens very briefly only twice a day, at 8.30am and 4pm – we left Carnon at 11am.

Our first view of multiple hire-boats, on the Canal de Rhône à Sète; we’ll be seeing plenty more of these during the next few weeks

Today, we started seeing hire-boats in earnest, mainly from Le Boat. It’s flabbergasting, but by no means unusual, to see a child in apparent command of one of these substantial craft, even during potentially tricky times when one boat is attempting to pass another, or to moor.

Infant prodigy, Master and Commander of Le Boat

During the couple of hours’ wait for the 4pm lifting of the bridge at Frontignan, we’d thought of and perhaps should have moored up just after the bridge, so as to enjoy the manifold delights of Frontignan – boulangére, a couple of restaurants, even a Muscat wine-tasting emporium (Frontignan being the home of Muscat, apparently), but no, we pressed on towards L’Étang de Thau and started running out of canal.

Frontignan had plenty to offer…
… including this attractive little restaurant, L’Épicurien

As a result, we ended up moored to a dodgy pontoon a couple of kilometres from Séte and on the opposite side of the canal from anything apart from a couple of huge, security-fenced industrial yards. C’est la vie, malheureusement! Not for me the delights of l’Épicurien (pictured above).

Who needs French food when you’ve got Fray Bentos Steak & Ale pies?

Instead? Tinned Fray Bentos pies, courtesy of daughter Wendy who presented them to us a little more than two months ago before we left England. Magnifique! 

L’Étang de Thau

Leaving the Canal du Rhône à Sète, we entered huge L’Étang de Thau – a lake that’s in fact classified as maritime waters – and though you don’t officially need GPS to follow the recommended channel, it helps. The buoys are far apart and difficult to see with the naked eye, but Roy reckoned it was fine with binoculars.

Hazy conditions on L’Étang de Thau

From Sète to our destination, the port of Marseillan, you pass huge stretches of oyster farms. Cloudy skies made for greyness and a rather hazy aspect, as you can see from the photos.

These wooden structures are part of a massive oyster-farming project on L’Étang de Thau
From the GPS, you can see the oyster farms on the left (in blue) and our course along the channel

Next stop, Marseillan port!

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Verne Maree

Born and raised in Durban, South African Verne is a writer and editor. She and Roy met in Durban in 1992, got married four years later, and moved briefly to London in 2000 and then to Singapore a year later. After their 15 or 16 years on that amazing island, Roy retired in May 2016 from a long career in shipping. Now, instead of settling down and waiting to get old in just one place, we've devised a plan that includes exploring the waterways of France on our new boat, Karanja. And as Verne doesn't do winter, we'll spend the rest of the time between Singapore, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand - and whatever other interesting places beckon. Those round-the-world air-tickets look to be incredible value...

  1. paul barfield

    An eclectic collection of photographs which show the canal du Rhone as it is, the highs and the lows. I also like the fact that the crew member wears a life-jacket and the Captain is smiling again. I must go down to the sea again………..?!

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