Voila Vincent: Enroute to Provence

We left Eus for a week or two and are off on a circular driving jaunt, visiting Provence, to hunt down one of my favourite painters, Vincent Van Gogh.

Enroute we spent another lovely morning in Perpignan, buying expensive recharge for my recently acquired broadband dongle, 50€ for less than 1 GB, which is shockingly expensive internet access. But still, the days are gone when I am happy to do without access to the internet. At home I would chomp that up in 2 or 3 days. Here, I will have to be a little more abstemious, I fear.

Despite the negative press in our guidebooks downtown Perpignan continues to delight us. Here, from an original little chocolatier we bought a small bamboo container filled with nearly pure chocolate teaspoons (the chocolatier showed us the moulds she uses) to stir into and enhance our morning espresso and there have been audible moans of delight in various plazas in southern France this week as a result.

We bypassed Narbonne, which looked tacky, though outskirts often are in this area, whereas historical centres seem always to be fascinating. We may live to regret this decision, but I doubt it somehow given what came after.

We headed to the start of the Canal du Midi at Beziers. This was the loch section at the very start of the Canal du Midi. It was stacked lock-high with tourists, and it took a single large vessel one and a half hours to negotiate seven locks up and seven locks down, with a drop of 21 metres, and the nine gates that contain them, plus a small stretch along the Midi. This is too slow for me. I can’t see me doing a Canal du Midi tour anytime soon, despite how much I enjoyed watching Rick Stein do his. Edited of the boring bits though it was.

So far we have followed the Canal du Midi at Toulouse, Carcassone and Beziers. Its guaranteed feature, to date, is that tourists are still interested in it. To me, it looks little different from most other locks. Historically, though, it was vital. Built in the 17th century Midi’s waterways were for a time, a very short time, the principal trade route between the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, via the Garonne River.

Our other reason for visiting Beziers was to find the Catholic church which had been burned to the ground when it was filled with Cathars in 1209, during the heresy persecutions. A modern church has since been constructed on the very site using the original pillars that were scorched during the massacre.

After great difficulty negotiating extremely narrow, hilly, medieval streets we finally found the Eglise de la Madelaine. It was sombre. The anguish of the Cathars was all pervading. Thank goodness, someone had whitewashed the burned pillars. So sad.

We drove from Beziers to Montpelier via Sete. Sete, a port and holiday destination on the coast. was touted as worthwhile -- but it did not appeal to us. Our little camping car was deviated up the steepest hill road it has ever had to traverse, almost in the heart of Sete downtown section, so that probably set our mood.

Sete’s beaches are windswept and buffeted, more suited to kite surfing than to sun-bathing and its sea views are hogged by hectares of high density pastel coloured housing being erected all over town, blocking out the sun. In a few years I can see these becoming like many of England’s council estates.

One interesting note: a lot of Italians now live in Sete, as most of the folk from the village of Gaet left Italy during the depression and relocated in Sete, seeking jobs and a better future. I hope they found it. We chose not to stay.

But, really, this near-coastal area of France had little to offer us. We couldn’t miss noticing the increase in litter on the sides of roads everywhere we drove, then when the billboards started to appear almost as thick as in hell-hole Bratislava last year we were astonished. No one tells you it is like this enroute to Provence from the south.

When we saw the first North African prostitute in a layout between Beziers and Montpelier we blinked, disbelievingly. But, as we drove on, there they were, in layout after layout, mostly single girls, but sometimes pairs, touting their wares for the passing truck trade—and, occasionally, we’d see a pimp in a van dropping another off. Prime time for passing trade, post lunch.

Catholic France. Hard to believe. Albeit on the short route between Spain and Germany, this area looks for all the world like the worst parts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia border territories we visited last year.

We camp in our least favourite campgound near a sad excuse for a beach near Frontignan (ha! – the French come here for weeks in the summer -- god help them!) and we were eaten all night by mosquitos. I counted 50 bloodsucking bites on one side of Bec’s face in the morning, poor girl. They really made a feast of her face.