A Lazy Sunday in the Carmague

“Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.” – Seneca

Having found driving to be a piece of cake and feeling well enough by Sunday for a day out, we took a peek at the list of markets which showed us that Aigues Mortes was the town to visit. The drive took under and hour and a half and took us through some lovely countryside, which changed dramatically as we left the Alpilles and entered the Carmague.

Today we began reciting our new mantra of "doesn't it remind you of home". Provence and our part of Australia have some definite similarities, except of course we don't have medieval villages and castles all over the place, or anywhere at all for that matter. But the countryside and the weather certainly remind us of home.

We were all so excited when we saw our first field of sunflowers, Julian told me to take a photo quickly and was distressed that I was too slow but he needn't have worried there were field after field of them.

The market at Aigues Mortes was winding up as we had made a very slow start but we had time to collect the makings of a lovely lunch, with a roast chicken, rillette, jambon, crusty bread, strawberries, cherries, apricots, tomatoes that taste like they are full of sunshine and lovely tapenade. Such a shame I was still off colour but even just a taste was so good. We enjoyed our picnic in the shade by a carousel the kids just had to ride.

With more time we would have wandered the streets of this lovely town and walked the walls.  We drove around to the back of the city to take in a view unchanged for hundreds of years, but no one else wanted to get out to look so I had this all to my self.

Due to a combination of a fierce sun, a two hour car park that was about to run out and a sick stomach we opted to go in search of flamingos.None of us have seen these pretty birds in the flesh before and at it was very special. At le Parc Ornithologique de Pont de Gau we were given a map and told we could take a short loop, around 2.6km or a much longer one.

We first saw this beautiful bird sitting on its huge next on top of an aviary and then within minutes we were seeing our first flamingoes and they were magic. Actually mostly they were asleep, generally standing on one leg with the heads tucked in, but if you sat still and watched they seems to take it in turns to wake up and go fishing for their afternoon tea.  We felt it very kind of them to do us tourists this kindness.

Not far in we came across a bird hide, where we hid from the hot sun, and watched the flamingoes from much closer up. We even were lucky enough to see one stretch it wings and fly across from one lake to another, it was so beautiful I did want to miss it in the attempt to take a photo.

Having walked about a third of our way around we noticed we could take a short cut, which we quickly agreed to, but before we had even taken the short cut we saw a way out and decided to call it a day. While we had  only seen a fraction of this place we were well satisfied that we had seen the flamingoes we were questing after.

Being only four kilometres from Sts. Maries de le mer we decided that dipping our toes in the sea would be a perfect end to a lovely day. In hindsight we missed some wonderful things however as my plan had been to stay in bed we did really well all things considered. As so we joined every man and their dog on the road home from the beach, the traffic adding an extra hour to our return journey.

This gave us loads of time to get a really good look at this interesting corner of France.  formed by the two arms of the Rhone River delta the Carmargue is largely marshland. We saw a number of white Camargue horses, mostly all saddled up and waiting for riders at stables by the side of the road thought we did not see any of the famous bulls. The marshy fields are bordered by reeds and we saw what we believe was rice growing in the fields.

What to do in a traffic jam..home school of course :-)

We picnicked in the car on the remains of lunch and eventually made it home to fall into bed to get an early night before my birthday trip the next day to the Pont du Gard, a trip I had been looking forward to since early in the planning.