Vaucluse Dreamer

We topped off the first day’s ride and train journey, with a lovely walk around the narrow and colorful streets of Montpellier, before having supper in one of the old city’s vibrant squares.

I do love Montpellier, it’s always a great place to explore, with its stunning architecture, beautiful trompe l’oeils and superb artisan studios & shops.

We spent a few hours over supper, watching the world pass by and listening to an accordion player, who not only played some great french classics, but then diversified with movie themes, including Harry Potter, Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean too.

Then in the morning, we had a relatively slow start, sitting in bed and planning a route for the day, which would take us from Montpellier to the pretty town of Pezenas.

Having settled on a route, we loaded the bikes again and pushed our bikes out onto the peaceful streets, with a few nerves about how the trip out of the city would go.

We’re such country cyclists, loving pottering along back lanes, and the biggest town we ride through regularly is Apt (and that has a dedicated off-road path all the way through it), so the.thought of finding out way out of a real city wasn’t really filling us with joy.

We needn’t have worried though, as more by luck than judgement, the apartment we had booked was just a stone’s throw from the road we needed to take, and once we were on it, we found it was very quiet and had a dedicated cycle lane too.

The trip out of Montpellier turned out to be very easy, with wide cycle lanes along some roads, and fully dedicated lanes on others, running between the road and the superb tram system that serves the city. It was just so nice to find such a cycle-friendly structure.

Once free of the city, we started following the route we had planned, although the roads weren’t really to our liking, being a little busier than we normally ride, and due to the landscape there wasn’t a network.of back-roads that we could escape onto.

Stopping, just to get a sense of where we were, I realised that we were making such fast progress that we would almost be in Pezenas by lunchtime, which felt like a waste of a day on the bikes, so I did a quick re-jig of the route at the side of the road, adding a loop to our original plan.

It turned out to be the best decision of the day, as we found ourselves climbing gently up quieter roads as we headed up towards Saint Jean de Fos.

For the majority of the morning we had been on city roads, or others lined with woodland, which meant we had no views, but as we crested a hill on a little back road, the trees disappeared and we had glorious views of the Herault hills, disappearing into the distance in shades of blues and purples. It was stunning.

We freewheeled downhill, through vineyards and olive groves, which looked more provençal than anywhere we had cycled through in the morning and at the bottom of the hill, we found ourselves at the spectacular Pont du Diable, just outside Saint Jean de Fos, where we parked the bike and sat on a wall, overlooking the sparkling water, as we munched our sandwich.

The Pont du Diable is an ancient bridge, at the head of a gorge and forms part of the Saint Jacques de Compostela route. On one side of the bridge is a deep gully, with fierce rock formations and turquoise river ….

and on the other side a wide lake, which was filled with people swimming and paddle boarding in the hot October sunshine.

It was hard to drag ourselves away, but we cycled on, through Saint Jean de Fos, with its wonderful potteries and glazed tile church roof….

Before cycling out of the village on our sort of roads, which were beautifully quiet, some having grass marking the centre of the carriageway, rather than paint.

The lanes took us through beautiful rolling countryside, and peaceful, sleepy villages, passing through expansive vineyards on the way, with the heady scent of wine in the air, whenever we passed a local winery.

It was a perfect ride into Pezenas, avoiding the busier roads that headed towards the motorway junctions, and we grinned as we passed under canopies of plane trees, listening to birds, rather than cars.

Our detour had added a good 20Km to the ride, which was perfect (you can see the route we used here on Komoot and we arrived in one of our favourite places, just after 4, relaxing with a beer, before heading to the apartment we have rented for a few days.

After settling in, and doing some shopping we headed out into the beautiful, medieval heart of the village for supper. Always beautiful, the buildings were lit in shades of pink and purple (possibly in support of October Rose – a huge breast cancer awareness campaign in France) …

Whatever the reason, it looked pretty spectacular.

So after supper and a good night’s sleep, were awake early today and will be off shortly to have some breakfast and start squirrelling through the stalls of the massive brocante market that takes place in the town today.

I know we can’t carry much on bikes, so will have to walk away from the bigger bits and it will encourage me to keep my hands in my pockets, (which will broaden Andy’s smile) but it’s such fun and should be a great day…

Then back on the bikes tomorrow..