Friday 31 May 1996

Camargue

Having enjoyed the good weather once, we did it again this year, only taking a slightly different itinerary, visiting Aigues Mortes, and then St. Gilles. On the route between, we detoured to the ferry crossing of the Petit Rhône at Bac Sauvage, and to the Parc Ornithologique at Pont de Gau, and assuming there's no Mistral, we'd recommend that route. From St. Gilles, I made a long side trip, via Arles, to Les Baux de Provence (shown here looking south from the crest of the range, with the Rhone delta plain behind the outcrop on which the citadel was built):-

in the Alpilles (inspiration for the town in Robert Westall's The Cats of Seroster), over to St Rémy (where I lunched again at the same excellent crêperie, then back via Tarascon (home of the original tarrasque, for the D&D fans out there), Beaucaire and Bellgarde. [This image has been enlarged from postage-stamp size from a not very good photo, I'm afraid].

On the way from Arles to Les Baux, I nearly got caught in a bull-running event in Fontveille, one of the little towns north of Arles. In fact in late May, the whole area breaks out into bull-fighing and related events, so be warned.