Pride cometh before a ......

Leaving Montpellier the other day, I happily took their tram to get a few Kms of suburbs behind me. What a fabulous system - cheap, easy to use, ticket machines on every stop (with instructions in English), easy ticket validation and so new and clean. They are what we'd call light rail, and they have obviously chosen to give up road space to have dedicated tram lines. They also have priority at all intersections, and just sail through most of the time.
Can we tell them about myki?

My plan was to walk down to the river that I would follow to the next town, and duly found the river and set off happily, thinking "I haven't seen any waymarks, but when you're following a river you don't need waymarks". After 15 minutes the path started to deteriorate, and I decided to check the notes for this route that I'd copied from the net.
Right river, right place, but wrong direction - "upstream". Stupid! I think subconsciously I'd rather walk down stream, so I went that way.

Yesterday was one of the most enjoyable on my journey - about 22kms to St Guilhelm-le-Desert, a little town at the foot of a cirque, above the Gorges of Herault. The walk up the gorge and over the bridges was not kind to my vertigo, but I arrived at this beautiful little village, had a late lunch in the square, filled with tables under the shade of a huge plane tree.

St.G reminds me a lot of Assisi, although much smaller. I think it's the small streets and alleys, stone houses, and lots of colourful flowers and greenery.
Sometimes, the number of tourists put me off, but here they really seemed to add a vibrancy which I liked - so different to many of the towns that you enter around siesta time, which are mostly closed up and appear deserted. However, I have noticed that there is a direct relationship between the number of different languages you hear in a town, and the cost of consumables, especially food, and to a lesser degree of drinks. Even so, I am finding that except for the large towns, the prices are still lower than back home. But I am glad to be walking, not driving - unleaded is about 1.5 Euros per litre - about AUD$2.15.

I had read about the cirque behind St G, but thought it seems a bit over-rated for what I could see from the village, but I walked up the valley after lunch, and you turn a corner and it's WOW! Very spectacular. It's a town I'd happily come back to!   ( Yes Dad, I know I finished with a preposition!)

A great day!