Perpignan (Rivesaltes) to Narbonne

D900 from our start until we passed the border into the Aude Department had mostly excellent road shoulder. Despite the traffic, we were very comfortable. Upon crossing the border into the Aude Department, the road shoulder that existed was usually bumpy and not as good as the road itself. We stayed on D6009 until reaching D709 since the weather was threatening and we wanted to beat the rain (which we didn't). If you have more time, there are some portions of D900 and D6009 that can be avoided by riding on some roughly parallel roads. D709 had no shoulder, but the reduced traffic made it fine to ride on. From Port-la-Nouvelle, we took the unpaved path along the Canal de la Robine. The road surface for the bulk of the time is hard dirt. It's necessary to carefully avoid roots and rocks. While rideable on our road bikes with 35mm tires, anyone riding a road bike with narrow tires should be particularly careful. Some of the path is like riding ingle-track. We were lucky that it had only rained lightly, since we rode over many places where there were deep bicycle ruts from people riding over muddy areas when there was standing water covering the path. This should be considered a "fair-weather" path. The local roads after getting off the path were mostly free of any cars as we pedaled into Narbonne.