Around Montpellier

How do you drive around Montpellier?

« The only place in France where they had to build a second motorway next to the first. The third option is a small road. »

Route verified on 4 August 2026 · We'd rather take the long way round.

Why driving through Montpellier is such hard work

The Languedoc coast is a bottleneck: between the sea and the lagoons, the strip of usable land is narrow, and everything runs along it — the railway, the main road, and the A9, the axis linking Spain to the rest of Europe.

Montpellier is the one place in France where a motorway had to be doubled by another: the A709 was built to separate local traffic from long-distance through-traffic, because the A9 alone no longer coped. Two parallel motorways, and still the same corridor — when most drivers were only passing by on their way south or north.

In practice, La Route Buissonnière keeps you off :

• the A9 and its twin the A709 alongside the built-up area;
• the approach roads and the coastal routes between sea and lagoons;
• the dense drive through the Montpellier built-up area.

Routing around Montpellier in three steps

1. Open La Route Buissonnière and enter your start and destination (say, Nîmes → Béziers).
2. Add Montpellier as a city to avoid, or simply let the app route around it.
3. Follow the route: it takes you along the back roads, well clear of the city.

A real example: Nîmes → Béziers without the A9

1. Leaving Nîmes, you climb west through the Vaunage — Vic-le-Fesq, Orthoux-Sérignac-Quilhan — hills of vines and holm oaks, a long way from the coast.
2. You reach Valflaunès, at the foot of the Pic Saint-Loup: the limestone ridge stands over the road, and the vineyard takes its name from it.
3. You cross the garrigue at Viols-le-Fort, up on the causse, then drop back down to the Hérault at Gignac.
4. You finish through Tressan and Montblanc, in the Biterrois vineyards, before entering Béziers — Montpellier left behind without seeing either the A9 or the A709.

Other drives where going around Montpellier makes sense : heading down towards Spain without the coastal corridor; linking Provence to the Biterrois through the backcountry; reaching the Cévennes from the Gard across the garrigue.

What you get for going around Montpellier

You leave the humid coast for a dry, clear country. The garrigue smells of warm thyme, the holm oaks are low and wind-bent, the rock shows through everywhere. The Pic Saint-Loup appears all at once over a ridge, sharp-edged, and stays in the mirror for the next twenty kilometres. You drive a little slower, you look a great deal more, you wind the window down.

Then you come back down towards the Hérault, the plane trees return, the villages have shaded squares and fountains. You arrive in Béziers through the vineyards rather than off a slip road. The road here is no longer time lost — it is already the journey.

Why doesn't La Route Buissonnière go through the centre?

Frequently asked questions

Enter your start and destination in La Route Buissonnière and add Montpellier as a city to avoid: the route then climbs into the garrigue and the Pic Saint-Loup country, without using the A9 or the A709.

The A709 is the twin built alongside Montpellier to separate local traffic from long-distance through-traffic. Both run along the built-up area in the same corridor: our verified route avoids each of them by going inland.

On our Nîmes → Béziers example, going around Montpellier adds 20.5 km and 53 minutes compared with the motorway, measured on 4 August 2026. In exchange the route stays 19.2 km from the centre instead of 3.4 km.

La Route Buissonnière · an independent project, made in France, with no advertising.