Bikepacking France in Winter Part 2: Cycling to the Mediterranean Sea

Winter in France can be bleak so we needed an escape. With this in mind, we decided to pack light and travel far. A bikepacking adventure was in order to somewhere where the sun would be shining. We looked at a map of France and decided our destination would be Marseille. We plan to take four days to reach our final destination. Part two of this trip sees us leave the beautiful city of Narbonne and head for the seaside resort town of La Grande-Motte. Our route would track the seafront almost all the way so we had high hopes for some beautiful views along the coast.

We hope to inspire others to look at doing similar cycling trips in France. Our website https://www.seektravelride.com has lots of practical information within it which will help you to plan for your own cycling holiday in France. If you have any questions for us let us know in the comments below.

Welcome back to part two of our escape from winter as we bike pack our way from the mountains to the sea part two we leave the city of narbon behind and head to that beautiful mediterranean coast destination seaside resort of le grande bonjour Day two of head to the med escape winter mountains to the sea gp exactly how are you feeling oh good great night’s sleep great little apartment all ready for what will be a relatively flat day extremely flat this will do my head in we have 120 kilometers and maybe 200

Meters of elevation rise in all of that but it should be beautiful riding next to the coast all day i’m hoping for beautiful blue green mediterranean sea views it’s blue sky let me show you the view this is just in the street but you can see a beautiful blue star all around

And beautiful bomb i quite like narbon i think it’s i mean it’s it’s definitely one of those things when you’re on a flash packing lightweight tour where it’s all about getting to a certain destination and doing a lot of cases each day you sort of arrive and

Have maybe a few hours to sort of see the place you’re at but narvon is certainly somewhere i will come back to to spend a day or two yep anyway blue skies are waiters we are excited we have had our wassel and baguettes for breakfast plus not rating for those in the know

Bella gives it a solid six not the best of the trip by far and hopefully they will get better okay the road ahead beckons so as we say on either So So all right and made it out of narbon really pretty easy to navigate out so that was good we are on a fairly busy road and just waiting for stevie’s had a bit of a clothing malfunction with a leg warmer but so we’re on this road for a

While and as you can see it’s yeah a bit busy not the greatest but i feel once we leave this road in a few kilometers hopefully it’ll be a bit quieter not much to see we do have a good shoulder so it’s always hard to know how long a road verge lasts for

But anyway it is what it is it’s a blue sky day and we are heading to the mediterranean so we can’t be too upset so he’s just back there so we’ll be on our way soon day two here we go vineyards quite a road a miniature sydney harbour bridge up ahead one-way traffic Bonjour Can’t be too far from the sea we are at a maximum a huge elevation height at the moment of nine meters as you can see vineyards either side of it we’ve gone through a few smaller villages the very busy road is over there and we’re not on it which is great

And i feel probably another 15 20 minutes and we’ll be by the sea happy days another good morning to be a cycle tourist Right update about 31. one kilometers in biscuit time and we are in the town or is it serena i’m actually not sure what town we’re in no something like that i saw the car co-op yes the vineyard rolls for all the vineyards we have actually passed quite a lot but

We are in a lovely little spot in the sun having a biscuit enjoying the day have you found it so far yeah nice it was busy getting out in our bond thankfully we turned off that road quite quickly and for the most part it’s been on really really nice roads

And not too busy the odd busy patch but yeah we’ve all good we’ve had it pretty well and the we actually even had a couple of little sneaky climbs we had a climb that went from the heady height to six metres of elevation all the way up to 47. can you believe it

I do not tell a word of a lie and it was through some pinchy little climbs up through the villages villages are always generally on the highest point of the land i guess back in the day when people used to invade and conquer they wanted to see where they were going

But i’ll give you a little shot of our rest area where we haven’t the bikes are doing well resting against the the bench with the scantily cloud lady there’s a nice little bridge i don’t know if we’re about to just go on to a cycle way passerall sarosh so maybe

We’re actually in the ville of and as you can see i’m not sure if this is an estuary or a canal we have had our first sighting of the med probably about 10 or so kilometers ago but just glimpses oh yeah looks like a nice spot as you can see busy little village And we have i think from here we’ve still got 90 kilometers to go so a fairly fairly long day serenaen Serenian the heart of the south i believe that’s what that means anyway right update over i need to smash this biscuit and we shall head along a bientot we are on a pretty quiet road which is fantastic my goodness it’s really bone jarring this is a smooth stretch of it now

You can see potholes hopefully we will not have rough throats proceeding again it’s it’s heavy going with the big potholes everywhere we just came off a stretch of about four kilometers of it so anyway here we go just turned on to a cycle path for the next few clays tracking the canal

And thankfully nice and smooth maybe the canals are midi would we be on the euroville 08 now potentially Who on the bridge obviously been horses here sort of get the feel we’re on the coast sort of inlet estuary marshland and we are at a massive six meters of elevation now so can’t be too far from breaking out to the sea right anyway this is pleasant easy rolling

Here we are with a fun park all shut it up for winter but let’s see we got a mini roller coaster and some space rocket thing and i think this big triangular structure probably catapults you into the sky for your death euro park You have two roller coasters yeah wow i’d go the green one i don’t want to do the loop-de-loops no It’s weird seeing these places all shut up little race track do you think we can get onto the speedway ah water slide Mega cart king towers king towers mega cart circuit de villa piage piage plage plages the beach oh yeah fabricus world tin toy soldiers dark zone this is like you can tell this is obviously a really big holiday place voila and indoor i don’t know euro park all the indoor arcades probably What do you think happens in dark zone dark stuff oh this keeps on giving i wasn’t expecting it to be as big as this that’s the third little roller coaster and there’s another place over there anyway but me there you go your virtual tour guide of the close-up french amusement park in winter

Here for the quality content we’ve come into town i think we think it’s abdi it’s very pretty here we are is this the canal or a river i think it might be an inlet from the sea an inlet from the sea wow very nice yeah looks pretty cool and tranquil doesn’t

It and quiet like everywhere gosh did we have some heavy roads to get to here yes i think we had about 20 kilometers almost since we’ve left our last stop and probably three quarters of them have been on the heaviest broken up oh yeah which makes it tough there is no

Footage of that because i couldn’t hold the camera and one bike with one hand both hands need to be on the bars but we have had some very nice smooth buttery hot mix but we have but it’s been few and few and far between on those heavy sections but yeah what a beautiful

Little place okay we need to go get the laundry so outwards we go for a quick laundry stop and lunch in agni we have now made it out and we are on the sign marked euroville 8 route so as you can see it’s fully separated from the road

It’s not too bad hoping the scenery will get better soon surely we can’t be too long before we see the actual beach right some marshland i don’t know i mean it is winter but this is sort of de-saturated look about the place at the moment not quite feeling it today

You can tell we’re not in the countryside maybe that’s some of it i’m not sure anyway this is euroville await breaking news the deep blue sea the mediterranean sea we’ve made it to the sea oh it just it just feels different all of a sudden sand on the bikes

And we’re on a separated bike path i think this is actually a really long ishmael the train line over there not sure if ishmas is the right technical geographical term either Great to see the sea finally after spending i don’t know close to 60 odd kilometers wondering if we would it’s been slow going today through heavier built up towns and we’re on the euroville eight this bike path’s nice now but i tell you what when they make cycling infrastructure with every intersection

Bolars big sort of squeeze through in and out of to slow you right down so you can’t keep pedaling along at any speed through them it just makes for slow going anyway i’m going to stop filming now because this great bike path is filled with

Great bigs of sand and i don’t want to slide out but we see the sea and i think we’ll be hugging the coastline now for the rest of the journey still plugging away here on the euroville 8 Not sure that might be montpellier montpellier straight ahead i’ll have to have a look at a map just had the most amusing random scene rode past like a car park there was a gentleman playing there he was playing a trombone out in his own with the trombone

Do you think he was told to practice some way far away from the house anyway okay let’s pay attention Oh we’ve just come off the long straight was it 11 or 12 kilometers i think so yeah and i’ll show you where he came from way way way out there oh pretty cool you can actually see all the poles that the train line is and the

Bike path was pretty well right next to it from the whole way wasn’t it yeah it was funny with the vegetation either side you even saw like rows and probably a good kilometer or two of vineyards as well i guess the french plant the vines wherever they can

So look at that beautiful sparkly water of the mediterranean and over here i have worked out it is not montpellier it is set now i don’t know how far montpellier is it could be heaps far away or not near us at all or not sure i’ll look at an app and see

What are your thoughts so far on the eurovelo 8. this bit has been fantastic and i suspect the rest of our 50-odd case wherever however much we’ve got to go so he’s going to be similar along either dedicated bypass or bike lanes on the road we’ve cycled from nice to khan

Before and it was a mix of that so i’m sort of expecting the same and having the coast beside us the whole way yes it’s really uplifting to see color like i said before i feel like a lot of the vegetation in the area we’re in for

Earlier today was just like someone had taken the saturation levels and just paired them right back down to sepia tones not black and white obviously but just that i mean it is winter so all the vegetation is sort of not in its full bountiful life seeing shimmery water and

Sunshine and blue sky yay i think 50 odd kilometers left to go and hopefully yeah and we should be hugging the coast i think we are for the whole way for the whole yay well no cycle tour is complete without a root mapping semi-failure it’s not that we aren’t

Following the right directions but our route has told us to go onto this road and the entrance to this road said bike’s not allowed so and it’s busy i’ve got cane for the next at least two kilometers i’m not keen to be on a road i’m not meant

To be with this sort of traffic doesn’t appear to be a shoulder further on and it’s both ways we’re just on the other side of set i need to get over there i’m sure busy everywhere to be honest with you isn’t it yeah but i think there is a way

There is a way okay i’m going to follow the man the way stephen lead the way so for the benefit of those of you who may choose a similar route i can confirm that this road the d612 is certainly not for bikes so a small detail but we’re back on the

Right track now on the euroville 8 beautiful hot mix no cars and pink flamingos it’s the first for me seeing them you’ve seen them in africa wow i don’t actually know flamingos were in france they look amazing brilliant About 35 kilometers left i’m really looking forward to the end looking forward to the end in a drink ew People amongst you which is all of you good spot we are no longer in cycling clothes because we have made it to legrand how do we pronounce it probably not how we just said it or lagrange anyway we uh just gone for a promenade along the the sea line let me show you

See this pretty specky the sun is only just set marina is over there lighthouse is that a lighthouse yes and you can see the sky is he’s getting all sorts of magic and then we have the the pyramids of the grammat not quite as spectacular as the pyramids of giza but

For 1970 construction it was interesting well did we have a bit of a trial to get here today a mixed bag very mixed bag the roads hmm we were on busy roads busy roads yes did we have little roads little roads tick rough roads tick smooth roads some lots of cycle paths

Yes which was a big cycle paths with great signage a little bit excitable cars with really not any clue of where you should be going signage yes and then did we also have the route of the road telling us go down this road but the law says

Cycles are not allowed on this road we had everything and must admit the mood was getting low by the end of by the end of it i think we had five extra kilometers under the route because of diversions yes and lots of getting through bigger towns which is always problematic and slow

Going and stopping and starting so anyway we’re here it’s fantastic it’s beautiful and the sea is beautiful what’s really surprising is we had a route today which was tracking like you look at the map and it tracked the sea the whole way yes and how much of the sea did we actually see

Sweet all there were some fantastic sections of by path along the euroville eight yeah there was and i guess we had this idea that it would be miles and miles and miles of riding by the coast mm-hmm and it was but we couldn’t see the coast no

It was it was riding by the coast which was just over there behind the grasslands all you know we were we were always just getting little glimpses of it and i did have this thought that after we saw the sea lion for the first time especially when we were on the part of

The bike path that was 12 kilometers of the euroville await that goes between agdie and seth yes and it’s like is it a peninsula an isthmus a spit one of those things i thought wow this is awesome we’re going to see the med it’s going to be that beautiful blue

Green water similar to what it is at the moment isn’t that spectacular i thought we would have this during the day as well and we didn’t i guess it makes a sight like this all the more better now but yeah the euroville 08 signage left a lot to be

Decided it was really great when it was there and it was really confusing when it was absent and unfortunately it felt like it was absent at key moments for us it was at the end of the day too and we’re getting tired we just wanted to

Get there that is always really hard we are here we have partaken in some treats from the local boulangerie did we what i just got a specky loose eclair whoa after watching this fantastic sunset we are off to the supermarket off to the supermarket to get some dinner dinner

A big pasta i think for dinner tonight but i’ll give you another look at the marina with multi-million dollars worth of yachts and catamarans and power boats motorboats is that what you would call those bigger ones motorbikes and and obviously yeah out to the mediterranean beautiful so ends day two

Head to the med mountains of the sea off to marseille whatever we call the tour day two is done day three tomorrow seasons go to avignon via pond de garde so that will be spectacular no doubt and let’s have every finger and toe cross that we have good route good tailwinds which we

Didn’t have today fyi and uh no pothole roads anyway arbiento send help just a little bit windy something else Foreign