The Carmargue

When we decided to stop off around Nimes to break our journey from Barcelona to Lyon, I hadn’t realised but this area is known as The Carmargue, it’s a huge delta area where the mighty Rhone exits dramatically into the Mediterranean Sea and wow I loved it.

The landscape

The countryside changed once we came off the motorway, it suddenly became very flat with the land stretching out as far as you could see only broken up by clumps of tall trees deliberately planted around a house or small group of dwellings to either block out the sun in the summer or the fierce winds in the winter. I was surprised to see different crops, vineyards of course, which turned into fields of sun flowers with their heads facing down, the foliage brown and crisp making you wonder how they were still upright as they looked so dead. Further on the fields became larger and flatter, some had been newly tilled, others still showed a few inches of dried stalks that looked a bit like wheat or some other such grain, then others already had a carpet of short green growth pushing through making it look like a covering of undulating green velvet.

We turned off the main road and the sat nav screen showed that we were surrounded by patches of water, streams, rivers and ponds but you couldn’t see most of them as they’re so well camouflaged into the reed beds and small shrubs.

I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like travelling here a hundred years ago, did people get lost in the marshes never to be seen again? I don’t know why I was getting these odd thoughts it was a lovely sunny day with temperatures in the mid 20’s, not bad for late October, but, there was something about this countryside which made me feel that it would have been very hard to keep body and soul together here back in the day.

Wildlife

Then totally out of the blue I spotted a flock of bright pink flamingoes in a large roadside pond, some standing on one leg but most with their heads gracefully ducked into the water, I was so surprised. I’ve seen flamingos on wild life documentaries and in the zoo but never in their natural environment, it was stunning. I had to stop to jump out and take a photo, like I was the first person to ever see them.

We continued on very flat straight’ish roads all signs of crops had now disappeared, instead there were fields of rough looking grass and gorse and as we got closer to our destination there were riding stables, one after the other after the other, each one  of them had dozens of small sturdy looking white horses, some just in rope halters, others already tacked up, standing patiently in line with their halters tied to a long wooden bar, their tails slowly swishing, flicking the flies off. I noticed one standing there with its head right down one hoof turned back showing its shoe, as if he was taking the weight off that leg. I know that these days they’re probably well looked after but I did feel sorry for them all standing so forlornly like they were waiting for something exciting to happen. As we drove past one stable some of the horses had just been turned out into the paddock, I managed to get a quick photo of one as he stopped for a drink of water and then galloped off as if he was enjoying his freedom.

Our campsite was huge, one of the biggest ones we’d been to there were 8 areas in total which made up the site and each one could hold at least 100 pitches.  We were told just to go and pick a pitch in either of the 3 areas the receptionist had shown us on the map, honestly this place would hold the population of a town in the summer months. Selecting a pitch is mind blowing when there are so many to choose from! We soon found a grassy, sandy area big enough to get 4 motorhomes on but only had one electric outlet so we figured we’d grab it and we’d be on our own.

St Maries de la Mer

Later that evening we decided to walk to the centre of the small town, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and eventually found a restaurant that was open. We were persuaded, by a fierce matriarchal waitress to try the local rose wine and found it very pleasant. (I recon if we hadn’t like it Madam would have said it was us at fault!) We walked home in the dark guided by the street lights, the place was a ghost town all the buildings looked like they were multi occupancy holiday lets, there were so many the place must be heaving in the summer, they all looking a bit forlorn and unloved.

At the turn of the 1800’s there were only about 100 residents in this town now Wikipedia says it has 2,495 but can swell to 500,000 in the summer. This is what we surmised as the little town has at least four long main streets which are nose to tail restaurants and that’s not including the alleyways around the Church which also boasts many, many more places to eat, most of which were closed. We concluded for all these to make a living in the short summer holiday periods this place must be heaving but today it was mainly locals enjoying a warm late October Saturday walk along the prom and a leisurely lunch. We thought if you can’t beat them, join them.

In the centre of the town stands a very unusual looking church, it’s actually more of a fortress than a church, allegedly construction on it started in the 9th century but there is evidence that a church had stood here even before Roman times. There is a fresh water well inside so that during times of conflict the townspeople would be able to survive a siege.

The exterior is very plain and its interior isn’t overly decorated either but it’s the story behind it which makes it unusual. According to legend tree women/ saints escaped from Egypt after the crucifixion on a boat with no sails and they landed right here in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, what are the chances of that, hey?  They were Marie Salome and Marie Jacobe along with Mary Magdalene. The relics of the first two Marie’s are kept in a box high up in the tower, and that box along with a statue dedicated to Saint Sara are paraded through the streets down to the waterside each year to this day.

Saint Sara is the patron Saint of the Roma Gypsies so gypsy families congregate here in May every year to venerate their Saint and have their various marriages blessed and offspring christened in the Church. According to the local musuem in 1965 26,000 gypsies were recorded as having made the trip here. Wikipedia says that anything from 25-45,000 Romas still make the annual pilgrimage. It seems Bob Dylan composed the song “One more cup of coffee” here whilst visiting the Roma festival in 1975 on his 34th birthday. Bet you didn’t know that!

Disaster after disaster

Tragically the population halved after a huge flood in 1856, the flood water was over 5 metres deep and washed away virtually all the crops and drowned many animals, sadly lots of people also lost their lives with many households being left as single parents or worse still as orphans. It was such a devastation that Napoleon III visited soon after the floods subsided and decreed that dykes would be built so nothing like it could happen again.

The dykes were completed by 1859. Hooray you say, no more flooding, however what it meant was that if no sea water could get in then no river water could get out into the delta either. The rushing Rhone river water which had normally flooded the delta during the winter naturally washing the salt crystals back into the sea and reinvigorating the soil were held back by the dykes so the soil held onto the salt meaning after a while little could be grown.

This devastated the area leaving much of the land dry and many areas became like a dustbowl covered in salt, the price of land plummeted until companies who made soap bought the land and started gathering the sea salt for production of soap related products unfortunately all too soon other alternative chemicals were used in soap making so the area was left devastated again by lack of employment. Sea salt gathering however is still a large industry in the Carmargue to this day.

Around the 1850’s to mid ‘70’s the French wine industry was suffering from a terrible blight which was attacking and killing vines, it was found that if the vines were planted in salt water over winter the salt killed off the bacteria, so large companies were formed to buy the land for the grape vines. The dykes were altered so that huge gates could, at different times of the year, either allow salty sea water to flood the vineyards but also meant fresh river water could be used to irrigate large areas to grow other crops like sunflowers and grains.

Eventually the French wine makers grafted American vines onto their root stock as these American vines had a natural immunity to the blight. The land again became worthless, but after some years a government subsidy set up a company so that some of the land was used to grow rice, this has continued to be a large part of the economy of the Carmargue.

In1914 the film industry came to the dustbowls of the Carmargue and started making Cowboy and Indian films, they had the dusty sandy plains which looked like the American desert, the cowboys and the herds of cattle they needed for the movies and more importantly, it was so much cheaper than filming in the USA. 

Many movies were filmed here over the next few decades bringing in much needed work and bringing the black bull to the forefront of peoples’ recognition, bull fighting was already huge in Spain but here in France the fighting wasn’t to the death, the skillfull cowboys, known as ‘raseteurs’ would compete to see who could flick ribbons tied to the bull’s horns off without being gored by the leathal long horns and this soon became entertainment in it’s own right and many performances were held in the old Roman amphitheatres in Arles and Niemes. There was a small arena in Saintes Maries de la Mer and a statue has been erected there as a memorial.

The ecology and beauty of the land came to the attention of artists, artisans and ornithologists. Painters like Van Gough and writers like Hemmingway came to the delta to write and paint about the beautiful vistas bringing media attention to the area so that by the mid 1900’s tourists were coming in droves and have continued to come to enjoy this beautiful area.

So, despite the numerous disasters the area and its people have survived along with the bulls, white horses and not forgetting those gorgeous flamingos. Today everywhere you go their images are marketed as integral to the area. You can’t walk past any store without seeing soft toys or fridge magnets of the trio.