Provence Post

The bridge at Avignon - only half of it left

Provence is in the middle of the grape harvest, grapes are being towed to cooperatives for pressing. Tractors of all sizes are hauling high sided steel trailers overflowing with grapes, Chausson did a bit of grape pressing himself as there were bunches of grapes on the road and he ended up with purple splatter up his white sides.

We have visited a few places recently, the more memorable are Uzes, Pont du Gard, Avignon and Arles. St Jean du Gard was only memorable for our visitors - a tiny fluffy tabby and an elderly clergyman who resided in a nearby retirement home – we were sitting ducks in the motorhomes for these two. The tiny tabby tried to endear herself by sitting in our kitchen; the elderly clergyman spoke excellent English and tried a little preaching to keep his hand in.

Palais du Papes - Avignon

 Uzes is a charming Provencal hilltop town that Peta Mathias featured in one of her cooking series. A Ducal palace holds central position, apparently still occupied after being in the same family for 1000 years. The inner square and surrounds were paved in a pale gold limestone that had turned shiny and marble-like underfoot. There were lots of art galleries/ateliers (workshops) and fabric shops. We drove past the Haribo (sweets) museum at Uzes but I didn’t mention it to Stuart after the binge at the Valrhona museum

Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct built in the first century AD carried water from a spring in the aforementioned Uzes to a city where Nimes now stands. It is a supreme example of engineering and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The volume of water transported by the aqueduct was more than needed, alot of it was used in fountains and pools as a show of wealth. We only wanted to see the bridge and not pay the E18 for the carpark attached to the seemingly compulsory museum so we backed up the truck from the ticket booth and parked down the road using Howard and Hilda to convey us to the spot.

 

Pont du Gard - photo credit Stuart

We stayed at Avignon in a motor camp for a couple of nights, it is beside the Rhone and looked across to the Palace of Popes which housed a succession of popes when Avignon was the seat of popes for a couple of hundred years. We visited a small art museum and saw a few paintings by French Impressionists, van Gogh and Degas spring to mind. Arles is my preferred town however, it had some seriously impressive Roman ruins including the cryptoportiques. To get to the cryptoportiques we went underneath the rather grand Hotel de Ville.   A bit spooky but incredible to think the Romans built this so long ago – it is thought it was the foundations for the forum (centre of commerce etc above) it contained huge arches and drainage systems.

Arles

With the money we saved from not visiting Roman ruins in Arles, we splashed out on an al fresco lunch in a square. Moules frites for me (really good – so much better than the Honfleur ones) small blue/black mussels with a creamy sauce and chips in a little wire chip basket. Stuart had (oh yes) – a hamburger

It was a short drive to Saintes Maries de la Mer in the CAMARGUE. All my boxes were ticked in short succession, I had seen the black camargue bulls unfortunately used in bull fights, white Camargue horses and pink flamingos sifting their beaks through saline marshland pools. I also saw rice that the area is known for producing, and the salt pans. It was a long drive to see the salt harvesting area as we had to skirt around the mouth of the Rhone – their salt production is huge and all used on the roads or in industry.

In Saintes Marie DLM, we looked at a few aires before going to a campsite that was big and busy. The office gave us a list of vacant sites and a map. We set off to find our way around and choose not one but also a back up site. We zigged zagged back and forth across the camp looking for empty sites that were in the yellow zone and also on the list of free places that they had printed out for us. People came up to us and offered to help and eventually we chose site 169. Back at the office they gave me a big block of yellow wood with 169 on it, an electronic swipe card so we could get out of the gate to the beach and a reference number for paying our account. Not sure what to do with 169 I put it in the windscreen, others I saw had hung it off wing mirrors, towbars, or number plates.

We took the swipe card and set off to find the beach, spotting a sandy track up over the dunes, we had found a shortcut – not to be, we were fenced in, we went up and down the camp roads and had a good gander at other camp accommodation like a couple of mice in a maze looking for the gate in the perimeter fence that led to la plage. It was during this second IQ test that I figured out the significance of the numbered block of wood – it deters people with yellow tags parking in the luxury red area.

The next day we took Howard and Hilda for a spin along a dike in the national park that stretches between the salt marshes and the Mediterrean, stopping at a lighthouse which is the midway point, at 13km from the town. The water and sky seemed to merge as one as we cycled along the low lying dike. We were not very high above the salt marshes where flamingos were busy sieving food from the lagoon. Ocassionally one would take flight showing the stunning colours under their wings – bright cerise tipped with black. They all refused to cooperate with Stuart for a photoshoot as did the white horses who also were more interested in their dinner than having a photo taken.

The Camargue area has a Spanish look, probably because it is not too far from the Spanish border. The traditional houses are small single storied and finished with white plaster, topped with a thatched roof that has a plaster coating along the roof ridgeline. They are supposed to be windowless but we saw windows.

   

Camargue horses

I have lost 70 photos since the last blog post, the lesson learned is to check the files have been transferred to a hard drive before re-formatting my memory card. I had to ask Stuart for a photo.

To cap this week – Stuart is on his third cap. The first cap is on a bus with his prescription sunnies in Italy, the second in a French church and the third is made of camoflague fabric. (Which makes him hard to find in a crowd). The cool dude that sold him the cap told him he was putting the caps on wrongly and gave him a lesson – only to say ‘plus grande tete’ (very big head). ‘Sir – how about this general’s cap?’ after Stuart discarded the a cap with bells on.

Lighthouse on dike

It has been a while since we cycled alongside a canal and the Canal du Midi is not far away so we will set ‘her inside’ the satnav to take us to a good place.

Flamingos