thin pickings: agde and cap d'agde.

LET"S NOT BEAT ABOUT THE BUSH:
Once one has recovered from being almost utterly overcome by the towering majesty that is the lighthouse at Cap Leucate… and shocked into speechless admiration upon beholding the grace, beauty and aesthetic singularity of the Jetée tower at Port la Nouvelle, there is next to nothing to take one's fancy along the Mediterranean coast until Le Cap d"Agde appears on the shoreline. And even then it is thin pickings. The French Lighthouse App does not provide, has not come up with, any snaps of the feux it lists after P-la-N until Agde, having failed to inspire any lighthouse fan to waste time framing up the totally anonymous harbour lamps that sit at the entrances to the parade of marinas that scar this stretch of the fair ocean bleu.

The Étang de Bages et de Sigean and its associated lagoons are extremely pleasant. Lovely. Very salty. But there are no lighthouses in there, so it lies beyond the scope of this posting. Just to say though that this étang area has wonderful walks and board-walks, wonderful birds, wonderful wines, wonderful small towns with good eating and is pretty much unspoilt.Wonderful, in a word: sadly beyond our price range too as we did entertain a retreat in Peyriac (I dribble at the thought of it even now). The area calls us back again and again. Why, there is a small lagoon which is saltier than the Dead Sea and is fun enough to swim in to tempt even Mme Melling into taking the waters! >sigh<. Oh well. Let's dispatch Agde shall we?

Agde has had one of those Mission Racine seaside developments thrust upon it. I won't go into that bit >shudder< .The old town is OKish although a bit scrappy and even a bit decrepit here and there. The place is generally built of volcanic rock, almost black cinder block crossed with basalt. The cathedral we found rather gloomy and forbidding as a result. But Agde has some nice bits too so I wouldn't dismiss it entirely out of hand. One can get to the sea by skirting both the town and the development, but even so Cap d'Agde in summer is not a recommendation you will be getting from me.

The legendary Hérault river disgorges at Le Grau d'Agde. Here it is: graced with two jetty lights that have been done up to look a bit like lighthouses, but not going as far as having lanterns. Note the blackish stone in the jetties. This was where fishing vessels would come in and go up to the town that is right behind the Cap d'Agde.  The marina side of things is centred on the tip of the Cape with its entrance to the Med. opposite Fort Brescou which does have a very minor lighthouse on it, in the confines of the old fort. I provide a snap of it, taken from the Jetée Ouest, to illuminate my narrative. You can see the stump of an older, earlier light, which fell out of use after the 19th century. The new light I guess must be to assist the recent jet set zooming out of the marina to try their latest motor boats out, not to run into the old prison that sits on the island, but just into each other, at times.

You don't want all the credentials for these lights do you?  If you do I suggest you take a look at The Lighthouse Directory, you'll discover all you need to know there. I'm sure . . .

FOOTNOTE: You will be wondering why I include a landscape, above the two jetty lights, across salt flats, of a bit of a hill called Mont Saint Loup and why I have ringed a structure thereupon.Well I have done that out of sheer desperation: because that building once was, in fact, a lighthouse. Yes it was. Defunct these 100 years or more. But still looking like a light! Hurrah! It was built in 1836 and gave up the ghost in 1903, and is now a French Navy signal station. The light was built in connection with improvements made to the Canal du Midi, which made Agde a major port. In 1903, with Agde in decline, the light was moved to Mont Saint Clair in Sète (this is a wee gem by the way, and will feature shortly when we get to Sète). The old light is located at an elevation of 113 metres on the summit of Mont Saint-Loup (Volcan d'Agde), an extinct (obvs) volcano rising on the southeast side of the town.

I am afraid we have not visited this defunct edifice up on the hill. We tend to skirt round Agde mostly and anyway one is not encouraged to go up there as it is a) always too hot, b) a nature reserve with limited access, c) under military jurisdiction, and d) because we hadn't twigged there was a lighthouse up there, to my shame, so far from the sea, until quite recently. I've got this old fashioned idea, you see, that lighthouses are normally adjacent to the sea. There is another feu coming up which similarly is not shining forth out over the salted waves, yet is still functioning, but that delight will have to wait until we get a bit further along this often dreary coast.