Day 66: Saintes Maries to Nimes

November 11, 2022

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The rooms in our hotel in Saintes Maries, Le Bleu Marine, had the feel of beach cabanas rather than traditional hotel rooms. That figured, because this was really a beach town. Just outside our door was a pool, and it was almost warm enough to jump in. Anyway - it felt very vacation and beach-like.

Downtown at Saintes Maries continues the vacation feel, with scads of restaurants and souvenir shops. A main attraction for us, last time anyway- closed this time, is the church. The church is dedicated to the strange story that three Marys - Mary Mother of God, Mary Magdalene (wife of Jesus?), and Mary Jacobe reached Provence in a boat with neither sails nor rudder, giving Christianity a foothold in Provence. This was forgotten until 1448 when King Rene the Good found the relics and placed them here.

This is the square in front of the church

The three Maries were accompanied by a dark skinned servant named Sarah, who has been said to have been a gypsy. Saint Sarah has been adopted by the gypsies, who descend on the town every May, take Sarah's statue from the church, and parade it into the sea.

Beside the church there is a souvenir shop with postcards containing a lot of the Camargue icons. Have a look:

Although normally moderately indifferent to horses, we become very aware of them in the Camargue. So we were very intrigued to find a large number of beautiful, huge, brown and blond horses assembled near the sea. These horses were ready to be hooked up to carts, featuring fat wheels. As far as I could make out from one of the handlers, these are beach buggies, and were preparing to take people onto the beach, where there would be some sort of run of the bulls to look at. If I got that right, we would have liked to go. However our reservation in Nimes was calling...

We left town passing the statue of a famous bull named Vovo. If you can read the sign below you will know more about him than me, since I have not yet read it - I am that tourist that takes a photo and runs.

Saintes Maries is of course by the sea, and naturally has a harbour, shown here. However by the sea or not, with our busy schedule we did not walk on the beach or actually touch the Mediterranean water. Next time!

Outside Saintes Maries there is a group of cabins identified as cabins of the gardiens (cowboys), now offered as vacation rentals. They are unique in using thatch for the roofs, and also for their rounded backs, faced into the Mistral.

Out on the road now (D-38), you can see a lot of traffic - only it's a horse and and bike!

Oh, no, even horse riders are distracted by texting!

Dodie has pointed out that I can not photograph every horse in the Camargue. But these next three shots are a crack at it!

And here is one for fans of blue shutters.

Scott Anderson recently wrote about missing out on the ferry that crosses the Petit Rhone, not far from Saintes Maries. We had better luck:

We got there five minutes before departure.

The ferry uses cables, but not for propulsion. Rather, it appeared, this is to keep from being swept down the river.

On the other side, some other two wheeled tourists are raring to go.

The ferry runs every half hour, so on the other side we had a blessed half hour of few or no cars on the road. But when we reached the D58, we found it flooded with traffic, in both directions. Our map book called for turning left at this point, but clever Steve had made a Google track that offered a quiet road, just on the right. We went that way, and were dismayed to see it turn to gravel. But we persevered, until it ended at a gate. Thanks Google! We backtracked all the way, and took that left.

After we did finally make that left, we encountered a great local products shop. We bought some nougat - yes, from Savin in Montelimar, and some lavender flavoured cookies. But there was lots of other local stuff to look at:

We had sampled muscat wine in this shop last time

But you could still buy it by the vat - last one on the right!

There is local black, red, and white rice

We were having a chance to see some of our last Camargue things, like horses and bulls together, the grapes growing in sand, and those ubiquitous reeds.

This elegant Camargue horse is keeping an eye on the black bull.

If anyone has seen the film The Last Unicorn, you will recognize her in this shot.

What do Camargue horses eat for breakfast? Why, baguette, like everyone else!

These reeds would soon be nowhere to be seen as we progressed north.

From the local products shop, we passed the hamlet of Montcalm, and its pretty chapel.

and we saw signs for the wine of the sands.

we got onto the first of a few canal trails

and caught these flamingos in flight! Oops-a closer look at greater zoom seems to indicate that these birds are really cranes.

Way way out in what appeared to be a rice field, Dodie spotted a large flock of birds. Here is the telephoto shot. What are these guys?

We even hooked into a rail trail. Things were going great!

This shot is trying to show different bands of colour in grapes that are changing shades.

But now, notice, we are looking down on something. We are no longer in the Camargue!

In fact we have arrived in Vauvert, which is not too terribly far from Nimes.

The thing about Vauvert is that we used it as a waypoint in making our route to Nimes. But Vauvert is actually quite large, and the program correctly assumed we wanted to go to the centre. The darn town is also built on a bit of a mountain, and the centre is near the top. Next if you want to leave, you have to go up and around the "mountain" top. At first we culdn't believe that could be true, and did a lot of circling. I took the shot below, with the lavender shutters, two or three times over perhaps 1/2 hour.

We finally got onto the right track, but soon encountered two locals having a chat by totally blocking the road with their two vans. Normally people doing this when other traffic comes along are quick to move off. But these two refused to budge! We ended by shouting at them, va t'en! But they still refused, and one made to back his van over me. The world contains all types!

Google came up with one more gravel road for us. I looked at the map and reported that there was an escape to a paved road, but the escape appeared as a dotted line. Dodie was not impressed, and refused to follow any dotted lines. Maybe that is it, leaving from the right?

We came to a spot where we could have an overview of Nimes, and it sure looked like a big and intimidating place. Once we got into it, there was indeed a notable lack of sustained bicycle lanes or markings. And we found the continual traffic noise very wearing.

Many towns have some sort of bull statue.

Not far from downtown, Nimes rather looks like this.

We eventually followed along Rue de la Republic, which I expected to be rather a main street. But it was lined with small time businesses, like launderettes and taco shops. Eventually, suddenly, Rue de la Republic burst into the large central square, containing the arena, cathedral, and lots more. A street leaving from there then took us to our hotel.

We had had some very good luck with Kyriad hotels, but this one in Nimes was very much like an Ibis Budget. When we get done bumping into each other in the small room, we will sleep and then hope that their breakfast has lots of good stuff. We are hoping to have a bit of a look around central Nimes. We think we spotted some interesting old streets. But then we will need strength to fight our way out of Nimes. I am off to ask Google if it knows any good dirt roads we should try.

Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 3,044 km (1,890 miles)

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