Mèze, brilliant, bonkers and celebrating like nowhere else since 1229

The opening ceremony of the jousting season, Mèze. Some towns do summer differently.

There are places that put on a show for the tourists. Dress up the folklore, wheel it out in July, pack it away in September. Mèze is not one of those places.

What happens here has been happening for centuries, is celebrated by people who were born here, and would happen whether you were watching or not. You are welcome to watch. The locals will be delighted you're invested. But they're not doing it for you.

Le Bœuf de Mèze. Doing this since 1229. Still going strong.

A brief and entirely true history of le Bœuf de Mèze

Le Bœuf has a long and distinguished track record of welcoming the great and the good to the town. In 1229 he greeted the Bishop of Agde. It welcomed the Princes of Burgundy and Berry in 1701.

In 1921 the President of France, Alexandre Millerand, made an official visit to Mèze and graciously took his place on a raised platform. Then, without warning, a frenetic snapping cow approached the stage. The President exited the platform. His emotional state at the time remains unconfirmed. A quick-thinking local deputy stepped forward, bowed formally to le Bœuf, and received a standing ovation for his courage. The President of France did not.

Each occasion is accompanied by la peña, the town's traditional brass ensemble. The procession parades through the streets in full ceremonial dress. Their sound fills every cobbled alleyway with something that is... unique to Mèze, and which the town is enormously and completely justifiably proud of.

Le Bœuf reaches its annual peak at the Fête de Mèze in August. He is solemnly put to rest on the final day of the festivities and reborn the following spring at the flower parade. It also appears at jousting tournaments, municipal celebrations and occasionally at events where its presence is entirely unexpected. You never quite know when the giant puppet cow will turn up. This, it seems, is entirely the point.

Only in Mèze.

Les joutes, the sport the town trains for all year

Water jousting is not a tourist attraction in Mèze. It is a seriously competitive sport. La Nouvelle Lance Mézoise trains year-round. Players wear gleaming white (le blanc immaculé is non-negotiable, and the outfits are a matter of considerable pride) with red ribbons for the married competitors and blue for the bachelors.

Les joutes nautiques, Mèze. The crowd knows exactly what is about to happen.

Two boats row towards each other at speed. A jouster on a raised platform at each prow, lance and shield, the aim being to knock your opponent cleanly into the harbour. The crowd lines the quay. Mèze competes against Sète, Marseillan and Agde in tournaments throughout the summer, with the major championship at Sète's Saint Louis Festival in August. Watching from a harbour table with a glass of Picpoul in hand is, I can confirm, one of the finer ways to spend an afternoon.

The Festival de Thau

Every July the Festival de Thau brings world music to the port and the surrounding villages, with international artists on outdoor stages by the lagoon. It is genuinely excellent and worth planning around.

Many of the concerts in Mèze itself are free, though the town has a particular gift for making this hard to discover in advance, so ask locally when you arrive. For the bigger ticketed events at Sète's venues, book early. Some evenings sell out. (I say this as someone who has turned up hopefully without a ticket more than once.)

François Valéry brings the house down at the Fête de Mèze.

The town that celebrates everything, and everyone

This is where Mèze truly surpasses itself. Because it is not only the big set-piece events. It is the smaller ones, the ones you stumble across without warning, that tell you most about the place.

Having stumbled across a small crowd in one of the winding streets of the old town, I found the mayor, a freshly unveiled mosaic and a celebration already well underway, the work of a local artist who has spent years making beautiful tiled friezes for the walls of Mèze. There were speeches, warm and funny and full of genuine affection for both the artist and the work. There were amuse-bouches fresh from someone's oven, a great deal of local wine and a punch of considerable strength, and all of this before midday.

Within minutes, I had a glass in my hand and a place in the crowd, welcomed by people I had never met as if I had always been expected. This is Mèze. It does not perform for visitors. It just gets on with celebrating, and if you happen to be passing, you are part of it.

The artist and the mayor. The mosaic speaks for itself.

I have since been told there is a weekly class where you can learn to make the mosaics yourself. The invitation was genuine and enthusiastic. I intend to go. When I find a spare Saturday. Which in Mèze, as it turns out, is harder than it sounds.

Come and see for yourself

The festivals are listed. The jousting is in the calendar. The Bœuf will appear when it appears. But the thing nobody can put in a programme is the rest of it, the tango evening that materialises in the square, the concert on the harbour on a Wednesday, the mosaic celebration in a winding street on an ordinary morning.

Eleven years here, and I am still turning corners and finding things I have never seen before. This is not a place you visit once and feel you have understood. It is a place that keeps going, keeps celebrating, keeps surprising.

"Only in Mèze," we say. We mean it as the highest possible compliment.

Maison de Thau sits on the historic ramparts of Mèze, two minutes from the harbour, the market and the beach, and well placed for whatever the town decides to do next. Sawday's inspected and approved. Check availability here.

Bisous from Mèze, Tamsin

P.S. If you want a reason to get lost in the old town, follow Rue Charamaule into Rue Gratte-Coudes — which translates, with characteristic Mèze directness, as "elbow-scraping street." It is exactly as narrow as it sounds. Keep your eyes on the walls as you go, and you will find the mosaics. The Mèze tourist office on the harbour also produces a walking itinerary of the old town, worth picking up on arrival. Though wandering without one works just as well.