The Velo Mag Bicycle Ride

The Velo Mag Bicycle is a wonderful idea. You hire them by the hour or by the day and you can go anywhere you like. An hour costs one Euro or about $1.70, while a day costs four Euro or about $6.80. We took two from Montpellier to Palavas les Flots, on the Mediterranean, a distance of about 10 km.

We found the Velo Mag to be very impressive and we would love to see a similar development back home.

As always, we value your comments, questions and omelettes. Alan

This is Pam now!
I can only reiterate Alan's comments. the Velomagg is an excellent idea, and we had great fun riding to Palavas les Flots. Palavas is the seaside resort for Montpellier. For those in Melbourne think St Kilda crossed with Rosebud with Gold Coast development or for the Sydneysiders think Manly. It is not an area I would like to stay in for any length of time, but for a day's bike ride it was great fun! The beach here is fantastic - big, wide, all sand, nice golden smooth sand! and there are rules about how to behave on the beach which appear to be followed - photo attached. The beach actually goes for several kilometres from Maguelone, a few kilometres south of Palavas, all the way north round to near Aigues Mortes on the edge of the Petite Camargue (see earlier blog). It is the equivalent of the Gold Coast with several towns focused only on the lovely beaches and summer tourism, but fortunately it is not yet as heavily developed as the Gold Coast.
The other interesting feature of Palavas is the fact that it is separated from the interior by several etangs (lakes) and it is also where the River Lez pours into the Mediterranean, so there are lots of small bridges and waterways to cross before you get to the beach.
We also had fun watching workman winch a small palm tree in its concrete street pot out of the river where someone had pushed it! It was quite an exercise. We were also amused by the fact that they have installed a tiny little chairlift arrangement to get people across the river at the beach end, to save the pedestrians walking an extra 250 metres up the street to the bridge! Instead of chairs though, you stand in the equivalent of large beach buckets!!!!
Anyway to get there we gave Alan a few heart attacks, as the bike track is not very clearly marked and part of it goes on side roads running parallel with a freeway at 110kph. Unfortunately for Alan the side road is only one car wide and the traffic goes both ways, so for several kms he felt he was driving into traffic and was going to get killed. I was not as concerned mainly because I have recognised that the French love cyclists and actually show them a lot of respect. Bikes, both motor and "proper" bikes are ridden everywhere here, on the tram routes, in bus lanes, on footpaths, whatever and nobody seems to care. We have actually seen buses give way to cyclists, even though the cyclists are in their lane going the wrong way! Pedestrians seem to accept them sharing the footpaths and in the narrow medieval streets of the historic city, where cars are very restricted, bikes, motorbikes and pedestrians all seem to share the space with equanimity or at least tolerance!
Anyway, once Alan got over the fright of riding on potentially "killer" paths, he did enjoy the ride. T
he first half of the ride was along the River Lez which flows through Montpellier and down to the Mediterranean at Palavas. On the Lez bike track, we passed fields of red poppies, which are everywhere in France at this time of year (even more than what we saw in Turkey) and of course we went through Port Arianne at Lattes! This is important because on an earlier blog, we talked about our walk along the river to Lattes and Alan could only say how much the modern architecture "took his breath away"! This time it didn't quite do that, but we are still impressed with the whole design concept of Port Arianne and how the modern architecture works so well in this place. Photos are included.
Anyway, enough talking. Here are some photos.

1st: River Lez Path & Red Poppies, followed by the infamous architecture of Port Arianne at Lattes
















































Now we are at Palavas:

• Crossing the Etangs & Canals to enter the town
• The river front incl the "chairlift"
  
• The beach
• The tourist train - every town in this part of southern France has a little tourist train to take tourists around in, on a guided tour. We have not yet been brave enough to identify ourselves this way, but the British, American, French and German tourists seem to love it. This is the best decorated train we have seen!!!
• Winching out the sunken palm tree
• The water tower converted into the town hall, hotel & revolving restaurant
• Other sights of the town

The latest in exterior wall decorations!









They have pineapple street trees and a pub with beer!
Dry muscat is the latest innovation from this area which is famous for its frontignac and muscatelle grapes. Dry muscat is a lovely fruity dry white wine, best served COLD!