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Uzès is a terrifically pretty small town which back in the day was an important trading centre for linen, silk and perhaps rather bizarrely, liquorice. It has plenty to see and do, particularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays when the market comes to town and the Place aux Herbes bursts into life. Masses of stalls are stacked with everything you can imagine, from herbs smelling of sunny hillsides, fat strawberries and huge oysters to bowls of crunchy green olives and stacks of hearty cheeses.
Hôtel Entraigues (from £102, hotel-entraigues.com), a beautifully restored mansion in the centre, comes with a lovely pool for cooling dips. For five-star luxury, La Maison d’Uzès, a Relais & Châteaux hotel (from £165, lamaisonduzes.fr), has a Clarins spa and exquisite food by Michelin-starred chef Christophe Ducros.
Next morning I headed for Nîmes, a town famous for Roman monuments, in particular the amphitheatre. Inside the Musée du Vieux Nîmes, a whole section is devoted to the city’s most famous export, the robust fabric known as serge de Nîmes, traditionally worn by agricultural labourers. Nowadays, of course, everyone knows the cloth as denim. However, probably the town’s most famous sight is a cleverly preserved temple, all stately columns and triumphal steps. This is the Maison Carrée, built around AD 5 and, despite the name, the Maison Carrée (Square House) is rectangular.
Across the street, in complete contrasting style, the Carré d’Art, a conspicuous glass and steel building designed by architect Sir Norman Foster, houses the municipal library and a museum of contemporary art. Also on my itinerary was a visit to medieval walled town Aigues-Mortes, built on the marshlands of western Europe’s largest river delta. Entirely unperturbed by the centuries, it is a remarkable town with streets laid out in grids, although as you might expect, hugely touristy, particularly in summer.
Lagoons at the southern end are pinky red because of the high salt concentration. Just beyond are mountains of salt; the town’s role as a provider of salt goes back forever and tourist trains chug back and forth to take visitors round the marshes. The lagoons teem with pink flamingos and there are rice paddies here too, while fields of white Camargue horses, sometimes called “horses of the sea”, converge to make a colourful scene. These beautiful, hardy beasts, not affected by heat, swim in the sea, gallop across fields, trot on the sand and live rather a dare devil existence.
A visit to Languedoc-Roussillon wouldn’t be complete without a gander at lively Montpellier, the region’s capital. With my guide, I started my tour in the main square. Officially it’s called “Place de la Comédie”, but known to locals as L’Oeuf (the egg) because of its oval shape. Montpellier has a buzzy social scene, though it could hardly be otherwise since 40 per cent of its population is under 30. It has oceans of style, and even the trams on Lines 3 and 4 are trendy — well, they were designed by Christian Lacroix. For shopaholics with cash to splash, high-end stores like Cartier and the chicest of chic boutiques are on the main streets leading away from the Place de la Comedie, but if you don’t want to shred your wallet, Le Polygone shopping centre, spread over three levels, has 100 stores to browse round.
Of course, the region’s wine is well worth mentioning. Languedoc-Roussillon averages 300 sunny days annually and has approximately 300,000 hectares of vines. Can you imagine, three times that of Bordeaux! Wine festivals celebrate the harvest or the start of the growing season, though it seems residents take advantage of any excuse to party with local food, wine, music and dancing. I visited Paul Mas vineyard, where after a delicious lunch and some moreish wines, was whizzed round the vineyards in a quad vehicle, bumping along narrow tracks, the driver waving enthusiastically at the vines while shouting above the engine noise to explain what they were. I didn’t mind that I arrived back at base a little dusty and then had to leave straight for the airport — it was a perfect end to a lovely trip.
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