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.

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’ 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.

 

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Next stop, Marseillan port!