Loupian Garrigue Hike

Loupian Garrigue Hike

Garrigue, Étang, and Sète

Today, we had quite a large hiking group! About 15 of us started from the Église Sainte-Cécile in Loupian, and walked around the "garrigue" - you can think of this as French chaparral (just no manzanita!). It was definitely Spring in the hills :-)

Poppies

White Iris on a hillside

Purple Iris

 We went off-piste to view this result of boxite mining

Then back to more flowers!

Wild thyme and yellow flowers

A wild orchid

This was an interesting plant - close-up, the flowers resembled birds!

You'll have to forgive the poor quality here, but can you see the birds? I did this specifically so you wouldn't have to squint ;-)

We walked through a little bit of forest

Then back to the sunny side of the slopes

Hawthorne

Over the ridge, we could see the étang, with its oyster and mussel beds, and Sète behind

More garrigue

And flowers

We ended up back in Loupian at Le Bar GQ, where three of us women ordered "galopin" - the waiter brought 3 galopins to the 3 Graces :-) We had a nice laugh, because in addition to galopin being a small glass of beer (~1/2 cup), it's also a rascally boy.

"Galopin" actually comes from the verb "to gallop," which naturally made me think of the Galloping Gourmet - take a moment (or 20), and see something about jambalaya (https://youtu.be/qbjr_gIRyKI)

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This hike was just over 8 km, with a 150m elevation change. The path was mainly rocky dirt roads, with some mown sections.