Montpellier: The South, the Sun, and a Rolls Royce

World Traveller Podcast Series Episode 5

Pip: Brett Hayhoe has a travel series, a GPS with its own agenda, and strong opinions about royalty — which, honestly, is a combination that demands your attention.

Mara: This episode follows brett into the South of France: what it means to travel somewhere three times, what a borrowed car and a wrong turn can produce, and why the people you go with matter as much as the place itself.

Pip: Let’s start with Montpellier, Monaco, and a very unexpected Rolls Royce.

Montpellier: The South, the Sun, and a Rolls Royce

Mara: This post opens with a distinction worth sitting with — some places you visit, tick off, and file away. Montpellier refused that treatment across three separate trips, each one returning something different.

Pip: The third visit is the one that carries weight. The setup is simple: brett was invited back as International Guest for Montpellier Pride, and his best friend Alan had a cousin’s car for exactly one day.

Mara: The destination brett chose was Monaco. What followed is best described in the post’s own terms: “Alan’s GPS, apparently harbouring its own agenda, delivered us without warning into the heart of Nice — a city that was emphatically not on our itinerary.”

Pip: So they accidentally toured Nice, got routed up a road described as “optimistic” — one car’s width, sheer drops, no room to turn — and eventually escaped by turning right where every sign said left.

Mara: And then Monaco. The Palace, the post is honest, was quietly underwhelming — imagination had built it too high. But the medieval village surrounding it landed differently: intimate, ancient, genuinely old in a way that holds up.

Pip: And then a police cordon, and then, moving at a pace that could not be less concerned with anyone’s schedule, a Rolls Royce. Prince Rainier, feet away. For a committed monarchist, this was apparently the entire trip justified in one moment.

Mara: Alan’s response is quoted directly: “Well, you’re going to be unbearable now. You’ve been a matter of feet from royalty.” Which suggests Alan knows brett extremely well.

Pip: The post earns that moment because it’s grounded in something real before it gets there. The South of France, the post insists, does not perform for visitors the way Paris does — it expects you to meet it on its own terms, French included.

Mara: Alan’s fluency was the difference. The post makes the point plainly: down south, speaking French is less a courtesy than a survival skill. With Alan, doors opened. Without him, the trip would have been a different story entirely.

Pip: And then there’s Vincent — Chair of Montpellier Pride, dear friend, and, with his husband, the first same-sex male couple to marry in France. Under armed guard. Because the authorities genuinely feared for their safety.

Mara: The post doesn’t let that land lightly. When you march in Pride, it says, it’s easy to feel the joy and forget the cost. Vincent is a reminder that for some people the cost was very real, very recent, and paid with extraordinary courage.

Pip: The South doesn’t ask whether you’re impressed. It just is what it is — and apparently that’s enough to keep pulling people back.

Mara: The next entry in the World Traveller Series heads to London — Pride and Palaces. Given the royalist on the byline, that should be a comfortable fit.

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Pip: A GPS with ambitions, a medieval village, and a man who will apparently never stop talking about that Rolls Royce.

Mara: The through-line is the people — Alan, Vincent, the cousin’s borrowed car. The place is the backdrop; the company is the point.

Pip: London next. We’ll be here.