Aigues Mortes France

Based in the Gard department in the Occitanie region is Aigues Mortes France, a medieval city surrounded by walls.

But before we get to that, let me take you back to the beginning of my day…Have you ever started your day on the back of a motorbike, screaming “AMAGAD MINGOS” over your helmet intercom because you’ve just seen flamingos in the wild. And you’re so excited and thinking to yourself “I’ve actually just seen flamingos” all smug and whatnot because there’s no way this day can get any better, but then it does because bam. Right there in front of you is the walled city of Aigues Mortes France and you get to go inside of it?

S and I woke up in Montpellier after a particularly fine food feast, only to discover that the food coma we fell into the night before had caused us to oversleep our alarm. I didn’t think it was a biggie, but S was dismayed because he had plans to take us somewhere, so after sweet talking the exceptionally kind receptionist at our hotel, we extended our checkout by a few hours and we were off on S’ mystery trip.

A mystery trip which saw us venture past tram lines, past the shops, onto a motorway and around a roundabout before we realised we were a little bit lost. Stopping outside a house that had a dog that very much wanted to eat us we checked the map and repositioned ourselves onto the right path.

As we biked along the motorway, the bridges and fields dispersed and were replaced with waterways. Waterways which widened with each metre that we rode, and as the full coastline came into view, there I was: sat comfortably on the back of our bike screaming “AMAGAD MINGOS” over my helmet intercom because I had just seen flamingos. In. The. Wild. And I was so excited and thinking to myself “I’ve actually just seen flamingos” all smug and whatnot thinking there’s no way this day can get any better, but then it does because bam. Two minutes later and there, in front of me was Aigues Mortes France…

And we were going inside.

Aigues Mortes is located just a few miles outside of Montpellier’s main centre and is a French commune with some incredibly well preserved medieval walls. Rumour has it that the city’s foundations were laid as early as 102 BC, but there’s no evidence to support this outside of a few ill-sourced articles and so the origins of its foundry remain a mystery. What’s not a mystery though, is how gorgeous it is, because it’s open to the public so you can see for yourself!

Before we went inside we took a lap of the walls to establish just how big Aigues Mortes France is. Turns out the answer is pretty chuffin’ big, so we stopped on the corner so that I could snap a photo. Partly because it was huge and I wanted evidence of that, but also because S looked like a sexy-ass power ranger, so you bet your sweet ass I wanted to document that.

As I stood there snapping away, I noticed that just behind me was a pink lake… I kid you not! It’s called Salon d’Aigues Mortes and the colours are the stuff that Instagram grids are made of, but unfortunately, because I’m not 12ft tall and we didn’t have a drone with us, I couldn’t get a decent photo of it. So instead I snapped a shot of S, said “that’ll do” and hopped back on the bike so that we could go and play in the walled-in city.

Out the front of Aigues Mortes is a carpark which, thanks to a massive gap between the bollards, we were able to ride straight into free of charge #MotorbikePerks. The only downside was that there was nowhere private for me to change from my bike gear. So I did a (very public) hop, skip and a clothing shuffle and was able to go from head to toe bike gear, to this

Without so much as a nip slip!

Whereas S just shimmied off his bike gear because he had the foresight to put clothes on under his bike gear before setting off that morning.

Whilst S did his 30-second transformation and chained our helmets to the bike, I was busy watching this gorgeous house over the road, patiently waiting whilst the owner took his sweet time enjoying a cigarette on his balconette. In his own home. How dare he.

Gorgeous though, isn’t it? Turns out I need not had spent so much time focussing on just the one house though because just behind us, encircled by walls big enough to warrant a zombie apocalypse escape plan, were rows upon rows of the most quaint shop-fronts and houses.

Every direction teased the promise of more property porn, and as I wandered along the streets inside the walls, I became so enraptured by my surroundings, that I lost S for a little while.

Turns out he’d just followed his nose and I found him a few minutes later suspiciously close to a meat shop with a tactfully placed leg of Jamon just teasing us from the sidelines.

It didn’t take long for me to discover why S was stood stupefied in the middle of the square, and that’s because no matter which direction you faced, the smell of hauntingly-good food came at you from every direction.

Freshly baked pastries spilt out of shop doors and baskets lined onto the streets, cured meats hung behind floor-length glass windows, postcard stations twirled in the wind and the smell of freshly baked goods danced around them. The aromas enticed you from every direction and, fresh-faced and hungry, we didn’t stand a chance.We decided to walk around and see what we fancied before committing to a restaurant, but our noses ended up choosing for us because, in the end, we couldn’t resist the lure of freshly made crepes.

Banana and Nutella for me

And I haven’t the foggiest what S ordered because I was too focused on my own food.
So here’s another picture of my breakfast instead.

Unfortunately we didn’t have long to roam Aigues Mortes because, whilst the receptionist at the hotel graciously gave us a few hours extra, we were still on a race against check out time, so after a few pictures in the square

And a quick stroll around the city

We bid Aigues Mortes France au revoir

Before slipping back into the carpark for another public makeover before disappearing into the distance ready to continue on with the rest of our road trip.