Southern France: The last tour!

Well folks. This is it. Probably the last blog entry about the places we visit here in the South of France. ( for a bit anyway!) Oli and I have been touring along the Mediterranean coast and the Petit Camargue region. We really went for it too, seeing some of the most beautiful towns and landscapes, discovering some of the oldest traditions and tasting some of the best wine in the region!!!
We first camped close to the sea and near a large fishing town called Sète.
Being on a budget meant our first meal was out of a can, but things did improve! The camp site was large and we were the only ones on it except for some full timers living at the other end.......was a bit spooky......a la 'deliverance'!!! Where were all the other campers????Still, this was a good base for visiting other places. Firstly we visited a lovely town just inland called Pézenas . Very medieval, it was lovely just strolling around the narrow streets for the morning. Here we tasted the traditional Petits Pâtés. It was rather like a British mince pie. In fact the recipe was brought to the town by a visiting man from India and his recipe stuck with the towns cooks. They were really tasty and made a good light lunch. Many of the buildings along the streets opened up into fantastic courtyards. The one shown here was the entrance to an art gallery but many were being used as restaurants.
We took an historical tour of the old centre and found the arched gateway to what was once the Jewish quarter. In and around were also some attractive houses. It was here that we began our obsession with gargoyles and lintels. The religious, the pretty and the scary wall people of the cities!




Some buildings were rather quaint, not so for the grand building that once housed the knights of the hospital in the middle ages.
Now the French are a rather patriotic lot. The French flag comes out at every event and can been seen all over the city. At the Mairie, at the Gendarmarie, at the WW2 memorials and as seen here next to the statues of Liberty along with the nations motto....least you forget 'liberté, égalité, fraternité'

On from here we went to take a walk around the eerie landscape of Cirque de Mourèze. It's formed from an ancient seabed eroded by rainfall into a forest of rocky pinnacles.Taking a picturesque route from the town we reached this weird landscape that surrounds the village. You can wander through the strange rock formations taking in the scents of Mediterranean herbs. The light here was really odd and gave all the greens luminescent colours. The soil was so dry and the valley so hot and sheltered from the cool breezes, it was like an oven and it was a wonder the trees could be green at all!!! This was a really cool place to explore and we had great fun scrambling over the rocks!
All this made for thirsty work. So afterward we sat for a while in the village garden. There was a fountain of fresh cold drinking water and we sat eating huge juicy tomatoes we bought from one of the villagers! In fact this little village does have some history of its own. Its the first town that the Maquis ( the term given to the resistance, after the scrubby landscape where they hid) liberated from the Germans. 140 of them died in the process, as a memorial to them all on the edge of the village reminds us.

The following day was rather special in Sète. A town that relies on fishing as well as its farming of oysters. Rather than being pretty and quaint it's very much a working seatown that still does well out of fishing. In fact I have never seen such huge fishing boats. They are used to catch tuna and often sail out to the coast of Nigeria to catch their fish!
We explored a bit before finding a place to eat our first local dish.....being Sète of course it was a fish lunch!! We were amused by two local buskers while we ate. I thought they were really good, but that was probably due to the effect of drinking too much wine on a hot day!!!




Next we wandered along to one of the canals that join the sea here. This was what we had really come to see. The location of the water jousting finals!!! This event began 300 years ago! The two teams in slender boats charge at each other and the jousters try to knock off the opponent into the water. The cox wain and two musicians play to keep the rowers in time. Many of the ports along the coast have their own team and we were lucky enough to see the finals!!Also while in Sète we took a boat trip around the harbour, along the canals and into the Basin de Thau. There are many little harbours around the basin which is mostly famous for its oyster farming! We had a glass bottom boat and could see the eerie ropes hanging in the water on which the oysters live!

The following morning we moved on and inland from the coast to be near Pont du Gard. We found a great site with access to the river. The Gardon river dries up considerably in summer but it remains deep enough for swimming and diving as well as flowing for the many canoes that paddle along. The famous Pont du Gard is actually a Roman aqueduct built to carry water to the city of Nîmes.



It's really impressive.......not quite as impressive are the posers leaping off the rocks below!!!!

In fact Roman history does lead all the way to Nîmes and if we haven't made it to Italy this year we found a little of Rome in France!!! The Amplitheatre is now used for shows and bullfights or tauromachies and'course' ( where the bull is not killed) The whole of the region, specially the Camargue is very Spanish influenced. Also in the city are some lovely gardens which surround the ancient Roman temple of Diana.
We couldn't pass through this region without tasting bull steak. It was delicious and very different from beef. It's amazing that an animal that keeps his balls would taste so much meatier!!!!! It has so much more......'beef' to it. We would get another glimpse of the life of a tauro later in our trip as you shall see......!
As well as the ruins of a Roman past in Nîmes we visited the Popes Palace in the near by town of Avingon. The town is also famous for its bridge that now, after centuries of flooding only spans half of the river!! In the middle ages people would cross the bridge to pic-nic and dance in the parks on the other side of the river. There is a French nursey ryhme that sings about the bridge.''Sur le pont d'avignon, on y dance, on y dance, sur le pont d'avignon on y dance tous en rond'

What with all this Roman history I was glad to find some traces of earlier folk living in the region. The following day, in intense heat Oli and I walked through the mediteranean hills that are covered in wild herbs and small pines and holm oaks. ( This landscape is called maquis, the name given to the WW2 French resistance of these regions!) Along a track with no shade, to discover ancient sacred ground.....marked by a 5 and a half meter menhir!!! It was so in the middle of no where, we wondered a while about the people who had once lived here and how they would have survived in the hot climate! The walk to find it had been a bit of an endurance test. Our own little pilgramage to the ancestors of that place!!!

Earlier in the day we had visited the pretty town of Uzés and enjoyed a fantastic lunch which was finished off with an exquisit fig and apple tart drizzled in honey! This was my favorite town. The old city so clean and most of the buildings have been renovated to a high standard. Perhaps this is how a medieval city would have looked when it was first built. In the centre was a large place with cafés spilling on to the street. While here we took a look at the medieval herb garden which gave inspiration and admired some more of our gargoyle friends!!!
And so our last day. We set off in search of the Camargue bull and the Flamingoes ( I was actually starting to think the flamingoes were a myth, like the loch ness monster!) of the coastal 'etangs'! ( sea water lakes) This part of the region is so full of salt lakes you can smell the sea in the air miles from the coast. There are bamboo hedges and vin yards that speicalise in the vins des sables......which we tasted at a vinyard, buying a case to bring back home!!!
It wasn't long before we saw the bull ranches and driving along a lane we were lucky enough to pull over and watch them for a while. In fact two huge bulls began a fight right next to the car and as the photos reveal it soon became a threesome!


We were in stiches watching. No wonder bull steaks taste soooo good, with all that testosterone in ther blood!!







We set off again after this excitement to the lovely town of Aigues-Mortes. A walled town that was once on the sea front but is now somewhat in land due to the build up of silt. From the ramparts of the city you can look out across the canals which join the sea here and the salt pans and lakes.
The water has a pink tinge due to the high salt content and algae that the so called Flamingoes love! It was only when we left that I looked towards one of these lakes to see flocks of them wading in the water...they are not myths after all!!!!! They were rather far away for my camera but I managed to get a solitary one as proof they do live here! One actually flew over my head......they look so strange when flying, like sticks with wings!!!!!

Well our last night at the campsite was the last night for the staff who manned the bar and there we were having just had a nice cool shower, drinking wine at the tent while the trumpeters of the bandas group fittingly played ferias music.....and we celebrated Oli getting his new job in England with cheers and teary eyes as our time here in France was announced to end!!!