All Around The Camargue

Well I’d thought with going to mass on Saturday evening, I could do a long bike ride on Sunday…not to be, the wind was blowing ferociously, and so I decided to…do nothing, well not quite nothing, I read. I swam, I sat in the sunshine, but as for anything else..I did little ! – I did manage to get in and out of town for my emails, and catch the evening sunset..again, and was early to bed, planning to get out and view the stars…but slept on, ah well !!

Monday was a lot lighter for the wind, and I decided to do the long ride – a full circuit of the Camargue national Park, only 70 kms !! So I was up early, butties made, water bottles filled, and off by about 915 a.m. ! I was soon through the town of St Marie, and onto the ‘sand road’, of which I would see plenty of today, more like a gravel/dirt road, just like being in Alaska last year.. although occasionally they were covered insane dunes, and I had to push my way through..the signs said ‘use your eyes’..meaning watch out and have a look around, and if you did you could see all sorts of birds on the flooded plains, including the famous Camargue sights of the Pink Flamingo –who managed to do a fly past for me ! I was to see many of them as the day wore on … I rode across the sands and road, soon passing the Gacholle lighthouse , and onward a cross some really rock roads, toward the park visitor cent5re, La Capillerie, which I was dissapointed to find..charged an entrance fee..so, as you can understand, I didn’t go in !, then it was continuing along the roads through the deepest part of the Camargue, by now being the middle of the day, and getting quite hot, even though I’d been battling the winds against me ! (and the foreign legion cap had come out !) As I travelled along there were lots of flamingos, herons, other water birds, along with black bulls and white horses, all Camargue favourites…and me, getting hotter and more tired.. until I saw the sign..phew I was even more tired, all that way back… ( not quite ,as I took a short cut ), I kept riding on the hot tarmac road for quite some time, until I eventually came to the ‘sand road’ to cut across the marais, back towards St Marie de la Mer…and I flew along, it being the middle of the day, and getting really hot..all the time different colonies of birds were on either side of me as I whistled along.. eventually I was back on a proper road, into St Marie and to the campsite….phew, ready for an afternoon kip, 48 miles in 5 hours, and I was bushed !, I had a kip, swim, relaxed evening meal…and early night, for once the wind had almost dropped on the campsite, and I could sit out in the evening sunshine…before I went out ‘star gazing’ in the black of the night –even though it didn’t stop them pesky mosquitoes from ‘having a nibble’..

A  contented Bonne Nuit to all !