Bicycle Touring France_ MOUNTAIN _ WETLAND OFFROAD

As you can see it's a very moody day today. A lot of dark cloud cover with rain also. For us that's really cool because it's been a long time since it has been so moody and we absolutely love this type of weather. Fortunately it's very warm so I'm cycling in my short pants today even while it's raining and man this is just an absolute joy to be out and to be able to enjoy this view. This is Lak Salegu. It's an unnatural lake. They have a big dam up ahead and keeps all the water in but it's an amazing place to see and yeah we absolutely love these you'll end up. A line on a map with perhaps some pictures online can paint a general idea of what to expect. The region you see here is called Ossetania, the southernmost administrative region of mainland France which came into effect as recent as 2016. Perhaps better known as the former province of Midi-Pyrenees and world famous wine region of Languedoc-Roussillon on the Mediterranean Sea, the part where we're riding through. Languedoc is synonymous with wine, being the single biggest wine producing region in the world with around 700,000 acres. It's here that they already produce a third of France's total wine production. Also the oldest vineyards of France took root in this very place. We like a glass of wine but know next to nothing about what's in the glass except from fermented grape juice and thought this would be an excellent opportunity to learn a thing or two about one of the world's oldest and most enduring alcoholic beverages. We're now here on the farm of Patrick. He's a biological grape farmer that also makes his own biological wines and just by chance we came across him and decided to check out his farm to taste some wine. I produce white wine, rosé, red wine and later on sweet wine. But come closer I will show you the difference. This is Le Petit Chamu. Chamu is Chardonnay and Muscat. Le Petit because it's not grape juice anymore but it's not wine yet. Okay. The yeast starts to eat the sugar and when the fermentation arrives at the half, I stop it with a very strong filtration. Then I bottle the wine and the few yeast that are able to pass through the filtration, once in the bottle, they will start to eat the sugar again. By eating the sugar they will produce some CO2 so the wine becomes sparkling. It's a natural sparkling wine. I think it's four. Please help yourself. Floral notes and there is a little taste also of yeast. Very, very pleasant acidity also. Yes, yes. Yeah. Oh, it's very nice. It's very nice. Yeah. It's too nice. Yeah. Oh, it's very good. Yes. Man, what a great experience to meet with somebody really passionate in a family-owned business that is dedicating spare time to making these quality wines so he doesn't add any sulfides to keep certain bacteria from waking up and eat the less sugars. We had a reasonably good night's sleep. It's cold now. My hands are a little bit numb and the day is really promising and of course somewhere down the line we need some breakfast as well. So yeah, let's do that. We made a kind of stupid mistake. I forgot our pan at the vineyard. So I had to get all the way back. It's about 10 kilometers. So not that much, but yeah, 20 Ks extra. Yeah. We had just an animated conversation this morning with Patrick and we totally forgot it. So yeah, these things happen not that often. Luckily. Did you ever forget something in a hotel or on a camping site that you really needed to get back? Well, let us know in the comments down below. We would love to hear that. Of course, I can imagine that more people have this from time to time. So hopefully we're not the only one. Yeah. So today is a really exciting day. We arrived in the flats of France. Completely different atmosphere than in the mountains and it's nice to have a change of scenery for a while. In a few kilometers we are able to spot the Mediterranean Sea. So that's pretty exciting. I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah. We're going to show you, whoops. I'm going to show you how it will look like. See you there. Hey, man, that's beautiful. In kind of six weeks ago, the last time we saw the sea in the Netherlands, man, this is amazing. We're now riding here, this red line in between kind of wetlands on the Mediterranean coast. There's Spain somewhere. Super interesting place to ride. There's nobody here. We camped here and on the right side, the moon is going down and here on the left side, the sun is coming up. This is actually part of the European Divide Trail that we told you about earlier, that one of the guys of Bikepacking.com made. Yeah, we rode quite a few sections of the bikepacking trail already and it's recommended. Yeah, I'm loving it. We saw some flamingos, so I hope to see one up close to show you. Didn't really expect this from this area. You know, when you hear that you are going to the Mediterranean coast, you have kind of an idea about it. It's totally different. It's also off season now, If you like this video, don't forget to like, subscribe and hit the bell. To help with our video creations, consider supporting us on Patreon.