HIP,HIP,HERAULT.docVIP

HIP, HIP, HERAULT! France might well be Britain’s favourite holiday destination – but travel agents and tour operators have seldom given the département of the Hérault much of a look-in. Probably for the very simple reason that a good many of them have never heard of it in the first place - or indeed of its bigger brother – the sun-drenched région of the Languedoc-Roussillon. Which has tended to leave ‘le 34’ – the department’s official index listing, created alphabetically in the best traditions of French bureaucracy – feeling more than a little neglected. At least when compared to the traditional haunts of les Anglais in France – where Cannes, Nice and the C?te d’Azur continue to top the tourist charts as they have done for the best part of a century. That was until an unlikely Irishman by the name of Michael Leary threw out a lifeline. Michael who? All right, his name might not flow from the tip of your tongue – but his no-frills airline certainly will. For it is the Managing Director of Ireland’s Ryanair who has stepped forward as the unlikely hero of the Hérault – having done more for the department than the efforts of dozens of PR firms and local tourist boards combined. For since Brits have come to realise that you can hop back and forwards to Nimes and Carcassonne for less than fifty quid (tax included if you pick up a good deal on the internet) they have been arriving in their tens of thousands. Quelle surprise! I was lucky enough to have discovered the delights of the Hérault over a decade ago when the likes of other low-cost airline chiefs such as Easy Jet’s Stelios Haji-Ioannou were still in short trousers. Together with my wife and two small children we set off for Montpellier – by car, as a matter of fact – blissfully unaware of the beauty of the area which had chosen as our home. It was our good fortune to have stumbled upon a city (the capital of the Hérault) the merest mention of which causes the person who hears it to come up