A Mediterranean Medley

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on February 25^th 2023.

I have a Mediterranean medley for you this week, a collection of photos of the landscapes that surround us.

Since we arrived the weather has also been a mixed medley, ranging from minus four with thick frosts, to rainy days followed by a summer-like interlude. We drove down to the coast on one of those days when the sky feels so low you can almost touch it, great banks of grey clouds swathed like curtains, hanging heavy in the sky. The River Herault flows into the Mediterranean at La Tamarissière, where the mouth of the river is guarded by a pair of light beacons that mark the entrance.

We saw a lone fishing boat, a one-man affair circling around close to shore, and the fisherman had his arm hanging out over the water, trailing a hand-line over the side. I don’t know what type of fish he was hoping to catch,  but today obviously wasn’t going to be his lucky day. Before long he gave up and headed back up the river while we sat on a bench by the sandy beach, alone apart from the odd person walking their dog, enjoying our morning coffee and biscuits and watching nothing happening.

We have visited this part of France on several occasions and I have mixed feelings about this stretch of the Mediterranean. At times I find it charming, especially in the small ports around the Étang de Thau, Marseillan and Mèze being two of the best. The étang itself can be stunningly beautiful, and watching the sun rise and set over its still waters is an experience to be savoured. I have a photo album stored in my head of some of the best places we have visited, and memories such as these are included. However, many of the man-made developments which are centred around the huge tourist industry here are ugly and ramshackle. In parts there is a overwhelming sense of neglect, and it’s not just because we are here in the low season. We cruised through here five years ago on Olivia Rose in high summer and it was the same even then.

We drove back by a different route, noting that the verges along the roadside were full of litter, not something we usually see in France. We couldn’t resist stopping in Villeneuve-les-Beziers and re-visiting one of our favourite mooring spots on the Canal du Midi.

From here it was a short hop into Beziers itself, and a visit to the flower market. This market takes place every Friday morning. We had seen pictures of a kaleidoscope of colour along a tree-lined avenue and had been told it was one of the best flower markets in the region, filled ‘with thousands of locally gardened flowers, plants and herbs’. However, on an out-of-season Friday in late February there were no more than six or seven stalls. It was still a colourful affair but not on the scale that we had hoped for.

I wanted to buy a bunch of flowers to take back to the house, but when I saw the prices I quickly changed my mind. Some things can be surprisingly cheap in France but sadly not flowers, even on a market stall.

A few days later the weather became so warm and sunny that we felt we had shifted magically into summer. We drove north into the hills, away from the busy conurbations, for a walk up to the Cirque de Mourèze. This wasn’t so much a walk as a rock climb, but the effort was worth it when we reached the top and looked down on Lac de Salagou.

We weren’t alone as it was half-term weekend and so we ended up sharing our precipitous and rocky picnic spot with easily a hundred other people. It seemed that this might be a regular day out for some of them as they headed straight to the best places, bagging a rare flat rock to sit on or a patch of greenery amongst the scrub. Typically British, we devoured our egg sandwiches, water and a bar of chocolate in less than half-an-hour. Typically French, they produced elaborate salads and wine from their rucksacks, no mean feat after the scramble on all fours to get up here, and settled down for a long lunch and non-stop conversation. I wonder how long I will have to live here for before I can shed my British habits and become more French.

February 21^st is a special day in France. It’s Mardi Gras, a festive day celebrated on Shrove Tuesday and the term actually means ‘Fat Tuesday’, so named because of the custom of using all the fats in the home before Lent. I have always associated Mardi Gras with the more famous celebrations in New Orleans and in Rio de Janeiro, but our little town of Pézenas was not going to be outdone. At midday the shops closed their doors and shuttered up, the roads were blocked to traffic and a long procession of people of all ages in fancy dress marched around the town, following a giant puppet horse, presumably with a person hidden away at each end, accompanied by a small band and much banging of drums. Small children looked sweet, dressed as chickens and fairies, whilst the teenagers of the town had seen a chance to express themselves artistically through their costumes, some of their creations so strange that if I had been their parent I would have been a little concerned at what went on in the head of my offspring. Fewer adults had taken to fancy dress, and those that had chose a white sheet fashioned into a smock. This was a sensible choice as children of all ages were taking great delight in throwing confetti, flour and ‘silly string’, a spray that sends out foamy streamers that stick to everything but is at least easy to remove. In the earliest carnivals, people threw less harmless things at each other, including rotten eggs, fruit or vegetables. We did see a few eggs strewn about the pavements but I got the impression that silly string was now the weapon of choice. It wasn’t exactly on the scale of Rio or New Orleans, but at least they gave it their best shot.

In the next few days the temperature is forecast to plummet yet again and they are threatening snow, even here in this normally mild corner of France. It feels like we are on a climate rollercoaster.

That’s it for this week. Hope your weather is a little less erratic than ours!

MJ