BEACHES! Palavas and Maguelone

Montpellier has a very affordable bicycle rental service with kiosks near the Tourist Office, train station, Observatory, Perols (near Carnon), and possibly other locations as well. You register with a credit card, and you can use any bicycle for any length of time for a week. The price is 0.50 euros per hour, and the usage time is counted between when you check out and check back in at one of the kiosks.

The kiosks at the Observatory and at the Tourist Office didn't work for me, so I went to the one next to the train station, which is across

the street from the Montpellier transportation office. Once I registered and gave my birthdate month and day, the system assigned a checkout code to me, and from that point I could lock and unlock the bicycle using its built in cable by simply entering my birthdate information into the bicycle's number pad on the handlebars.

The bicycle path begins next to the train station. I rode up the incline, on the same road the tram takes, rode past Le

Polygone shopping area and down into Antigone. From there, I wove around the Olympic Natatorium, across the Lez River, and onto the bicycle path. The path took me past some apartment complexes and restaurants before opening up to a wide, expansive wetland preserve running along the river.

On my first ride, a bee flew into my mouth. Luckily, I spit it out before it became bee sushi with a sting. It was a little tricky to find the path when I got to Porte Ariane. I had to go

around a hairpin turn, down the road to an underpass and then back up to the river embankment. Beyond that, I rode past horse stables, a marina, the Etang de l’Or, and then into the town of Palavas-les-Flots.

Within 1/8 of a mile, I was faced with a fork in the road: turn to the

Palavas left bank

left bank or right bank of the beach. The left bank takes you northeast to Carnon. The beaches in that direction are very touristy, very young, and in August, heavily lubricated with booze. The beaches to the right are a little more obscure, and it's in that direction I headed to find the Maguelone Cathedral written about by my new acquaintance, Roch-Gérard Salager.

From the fork in the road, it was a 15-minute ride past hotels, an

Vineyards near Maguelone

RV camper park, and down a long strip of land defined by sand dunes before I reached the turn to the cathedral. Maguelone is an island that sits between the Etang de l'Arnel and the Mediterranean. For centuries, it was accessible only by sea, which made it vulnerable to attack by ships. It

Maguelone Cathedral is on an island accessible by bike

was the site of a Visigoth church dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries that was later destroyed. The Maguelone Cathedral was consecrated in 1054 and closed in 1632. During its operation, two popes sought sanctuary here: Pope Gelasius II (1118), and Pope Alexander III (1163).

The day I visited the cathedral,

The choir inside Maguelone Cathedral

folding chairs had been laid out in preparation for a concert. I wished I'd had a few more days in France to attend!









You can bike to the sea from Montpellier. It's about 10 miles, and there's a dedicated bicycle path the entire way.

Maguelone Cathedral