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A harbour amidst the dunes and vegetable gardens
Carnon, which is a welcoming port for boats, farms its coast and the area inland. By saving the dunes and taking good care of the agriculture, Carnon has played a green card that is worth its weight in gold.
Palavas has its panoramic restaurant tower and Carnon has its big wheel, which turns even more and is even more lit up. At night, from a distance, it’s a good marker. But watch out when you draw nearer – it’s a wrecker’s lantern: if you go straight on, you’ll end up on the beach. Half a mile to the west, amid the lights of the town, what you should be looking for are the red and green lights of the en
trance, which is also signposted by a large, pale building planted at the channel entrance.
The buildings surrounding the yacht harbour, which will shelter you from the off-shore winds, aren’t Carnon’s “historic” resort accommodation. The typical urban landscape here is the row of post-war “Villa Mon Rêve” (Dream Villas) along the lovely beaches of Travers, hemmed in by a dune.
Before this, there were only a few fishermen’s huts built along the natural channel between the sea and the lagoon, which had been converted into holiday homes. They can still be found on the edges of the canals. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that, thanks to the proximity of Montpellier and the fashion for sea bathing, little picnic huts began to be built along the East beach side, followed by refreshment areas and, little by little, houses.
SAND IS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD
If you arrived from the West, you will have noticed the large amount of groynes along the coast. If you came from the East, you will have sailed along the oldest area of “ganivelles” [barriers made from wooden slats] in the Languedoc. They are both ways of holding back the sand, to preserve the coastal environment, which is a source of income for the summer resorts. No more beach
means no more money... everyone’s grasped this by now, and they’re investing in the green economy!
With lower and lower levels of alluvia, owing to increased domestication of animals and concreting of river banks, the Rhône and the Ligurian current (see cabotages.fr) no longer reload the coasts with sand. So the resorts do whatever they can to keep the little that’s left...
By planting fences made from chestnut stakes as long as about twenty years ago, Carnon was a pioneer in this area. Turning the dunes into a series of pigeonholes, the “ganivelles” have two advantages: they intercept the sand carried by the wind and protect the dune from people walking over it, which is partly to blame for the disappearance of the vegetation. And it works. The first level of “ganivelles” is often covered by sand, and a second is built on top to replace it. Their geometry now forms part of the landscape from Argelès to Port Camargue.
GREEN GOLD AND CARROTS
You are now entering the outer harbour, which is so big that it is used as a practice area by flotillas of Optimists from the sailing school. Then you enter the canal, where the current can be as fast as two knots. There’s no mooring along the banks: this is the fishing harbour, which is small but which sells its fresh produce to the holiday makers, residents and restauranteurs of Carnon every morning.
At the end on your right is the visitor’s quay, diesel and the harbour master’s office. So the big harbour’s all yours. You will soon notice that the water is green, like a swimming pool that’s “on the turn”. Don’t be deceived – it’s not dirty, just very rich in organic elements, microalgae, plankton and all kinds of plants which thrive in very briny water.
Unlike Palava
s and many other places, the harbour hasn’t been won back from the sea, but from the “Étang de l’Or” [Golden Lagoon] (or Mauguio Lagoon), which is not navigable – the harbour is in the lagoon’s spillway. This explains the rate of the current and the plant-like colour of the water.
This colour has more to do with the name of the “Étang de l’Or” than you might think. “Or”, or gold, is not yellow in this case, but green: in the Occitan language, estanh de l’òrt means “Garden Lagoon”. It can all be explained: the Mauguio plain (an area in Carnon’s administrative district) is Montpellier’s vegetable garden. So, in addition to fresh fish, you’ll find excellent vegetables there too.
Moor in the place assigned to you, between the poles. On the West side, you’re nice and quiet, but you’ve got a bit of a walk if you want to go anywhere; on the East side, you’re right in the middle of the cheerful bustle of the quays. But you’re still in quiet, civilised waters, to match your surroundings, which are a pure product of the great developments thought up in the sixties.
The harbour was created in 1970 and became the new town centre. Buildings sprang up like mushrooms and the population of 3,000 permanent inhabitants increases tenfold in the summer. Montpellier’s yacht harbour and beach, Carnon comes to life as soon as the sun shines, even in the winter. You, on the other hand, will find it easy to use public transport to visit the “capital”, a stone’s throw away.
