Best Anchorages — Gulf of Lion & Camargue

Port Camargue is one of the largest marina complexes in Europe (4,500 berths), built in the 1960s purpose-built resort development on the flat Camargue coast W of the Rhône delta.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is the most famous pilgrimage town of the Camargue — a whitewashed Romanesque church-fortress on the flat delta coast, home to the annual Gypsy pilgrimage (May and October) when thousands gather to venerate the Black Sarah (patron saint of the Romani).

The Pointe de l'Espiguette is a dramatic 4km sandy spit at the W edge of the Camargue / Rhône delta, built up by millennia of sediment carried by the Petit Rhône river.

Palavas-les-Flots is a popular beach resort immediately S of Montpellier — the city's traditional seaside escape since the Belle Époque.

The Étang de Thau is the largest coastal lagoon in France — 20km long, up to 10km wide, and protected from the Gulf of Lion by a narrow barrier of sand dunes.

Marseillan Plage is a long sandy beach at the W end of the Étang de Thau barrier dune system, adjacent to the Marseillan port which connects the lagoon to the sea.

Cap d'Agde is the one genuine natural feature on the otherwise relentlessly flat Languedoc coastline — a volcanic basalt headland (Mont Saint-Loup) formed by an ancient lava flow from the Hérault hinterland.

The Hérault River mouth below Agde (Grau d'Agde) is the sea entry to one of the most historically remarkable towns on the Languedoc coast.

Valras-Plage is a small beach resort at the mouth of the Aude River — the same river that flows through Narbonne and is connected via a side canal to the Canal du Midi system.

The Étang de Leucate (Lake Leucate) is a large coastal lagoon at the southern end of the Gulf of Lion, straddling the Aude and Pyrénées-Orientales department boundary and entered via Port-Leucate at the S.