Le Tour Part 3 - Cote d'Azur, Arles and the Camargue

Except that there was no actual Tour on my day along the Cote d'Azur (you’ve already heard my one little Tour news catch up with the Italian newspaper).

I drove a very long way, or at least for a very long time. One of the few bum steers from the Lonely Planet guide – it suggested the drive through Digne le Bains would be a treat because of the lavender. It failed to mention how long and tedious the drive would be if it wasn’t lavender season. Anyway, I eventually got closer to the Mediterranean Coast (le Cote d’Azur – lit the Blue Coast). I decided to start my coastal journey at Cannes rather than Nice, which is fine as I’m sure I’ll get a chance to see Nice sometime soon (the Cote d’Or, or Gold Coast). Cannes looked like a lovely place to be if you had no interest in finding a car park. Once I got within the city limits, I don’t think I got out of second gear for the rest of the day

I did eventually find a park, and went for a walk along the beach. Now, I’d suspected that my (ie Queenslander) idea of a beach might not be that of everyone else’s in the world, but still I was a bit disappointed. The tiny patches of rock that held masses of extremely over tanned (and prematurely aged) persons were amazing. I’d lost my bottle of sunscreen, so I went into a little shop that also sold yachting accessories and paid €20 for a bottle (to be fair, it was good sunscreen and smelt of apricots).

Still, the weather was glorious and the water truly was an amazing colour. I drove all the way along for the whole day until I got away from the more glitzy areas and found a rather nice little seaside town towards Toulon where I stopped and had my first proper restaurant meal in France. Absolutely superb. It’s a good thing I was spending so much time camping on the mountains in France, because otherwise I might have spent a lot of money and gained a lot of weight eating the scrumptious food (although really not that expensive when you’re thinking in pounds). The other great thing about this restaurant is that I’d spend the day being too paranoid about thieves to leave my bag in the car and go for a swim. But the nice people in the beach restaurant not only minded my bag, but they also lent me a towel so at 9pm I went for a lovely twilight dip in the warm sea, all alone as the crowds had left for the day.

As I headed all the way around the coast, I looked back and took this photo.




Then, as night fell, I headed out onto the blessed autoroute again. I forgot to say that earlier I’d gotten caught up in the Tour again, having to make another detour around a road they would be travelling along. So I decided to skip Marseille (something to look forward to for another day) and head on out to somewhere near the Camargue, which I’d always wanted to see since reading about the wild white horses of the Camargue as a child. I looked at the map, and managed to make it to a place called Arles before needing to stop for a sleep (in a shopping centre carpark – cities were definitely less romantic places to camp in).

And what a place! It turned out that this city I’d never heard of had masses of Roman history, and more, was the place where Van Gogh had painted most of his paintings, gone mad, cut off his ear, etc etc. He’d raved about the gorgeous light, and I had to agree with him. The whole area from here to Toulouse was pastel. So very pretty, yet so different from both the magnificent alps and the sparkling Mediterranean coast. This was France for you, not a huge country by Australian standards, but they pack a hell of a lot of variety (scenery, climates, food and more) into that space.

I was a little disconcerted when I started driving around town, and found myself lost in a maze of tiny streets. I’m not sure if this photo shows exactly how well this street fitted around my car – the odd early morning pedestrian had to leap up into any doorway handy.

I had thought I was going to be having another day sans Tour, but it turned out that the Marseille to Montpellier stage was going right through the middle of Arles! So first I went on a walking tour around town with the aide of a €1 guide showing all the Roman, medieval, renaissance and Van Gogh treasures of town.

Here we have the garden of the hospital where Van Gogh was committed after that little ear lopping incident. Note the print of his painting of the garden in front of the garden – I think someone here might have been to some effort to keep that place the same.

Amongst the many treasures I came across en route was the massive Roman ampitheature. Where once gladiators entertained the crowds, today, with the safety benefit of scaffolding type seating over the older seats, the locals watch with great enthusiasm bull fights with the local Camargue bulls. I was told that unlike in Spain, the bulls here aren’t killed, merely deprived of a rosette upon their horns. I like to think that’s true.

What I really liked about the second photo is that if you open it up you’ll see that in this medieval arena, possibly the same passage where once the lions were sent down, you now have directions for the second class seating.

However, part of the walking tour was aimed at scoping out the best spot to watch the tour go by that day. A very different situation to that in the mountains of course – half way through a flat stage is not likely to produce the race altering dynamics that an incredibly hard mountain finish does. And I knew they would be absolutely flying past, so I tried to pick the trickiest, bendiest bit of the course to stand next to, in the hope they’d be going a tiny bit slower.

First though I went past this primary school class. The teachers had brought the kids out to enjoy the spectacle – how gorgeous!

Before moving to England late last year, I hadn’t been to Europe since 2001. And I’m sure that time I didn’t see any Aussie pubs. Now you’re as likely to spot something like this “Wallabeer” (huh) as you are an Irish pub. They’re actually quite nice inside, it’s like someone’s made a brief trip to an Ettamogah pub mixed with some sort of trendy inner city bar, mixed with a Steve Irwin park. I did think of mentioning that we have crocs not alligators, but decided my French wasn’t up to that. However, being the honorary Aussie in the pub I convinced them to turn the TV onto Eurosports so I could see what was happening in the race.

This is a bit of a common theme in this story. I did absolutely love being there at the Tour, and hope to go again one day. But... it was awfully tough trying to work out what was actually happening in the bigger picture without internet, tv, radio (in english at least, I heard plenty of talk about the tour en français) or even newspapers (although that was just me not thinking to pick one up most of the time).

Again I was in place to watch the caravan go by – a lot faster than last time, that’s for sure! PMU is like the TAB, a national betting agency that in the past has been responsible for handing out rather dangerous green “hands”, the reason for at least two accidents with the cyclists that I can remember. This year they were made of a softer sort of foam than the one that knocked Thor Hushovd around.

A quick flash, and there goes the peloton, Cadel safely tucked up amongst his team looking very comfortable. I had a good spot on top of some street furniture.

After the race had gone by, I walked back under the glorious sunshine over the glorious bridge to the glorious city centre where I wondered into a pub (Irish this time) to finish watching the race. Here I met a lovely couple of Norweigans, and after chatting for a while and watching the sprint finish they very kindly invited me back to their hotel for a swim (no dodginess intended :) ). So I raced back to my car and joined them in their converted monastery for a swim, and oh, glory of all glories, a shower! Now, there were showers along the road at service stations (although I did get told a couple of times that I had to be with one of the trucks to get in) and also I snuck into the odd caravan park for a shower, but this was a deluxe hotel and no risk of someone chasing me out. Lovely, I gave my heartfelt thanks then went off for yet another superb meal and then back to the carpark for sleep.

The next day I set out to visit the Camargue, my second and last true touristy thing in France as I booked a “safari”. Before the tour though I took a quick walk down to the bird hide (meeting some Americans I was later to meet again on the Champs Elysée watching the final race) and also down to the coast. Nice little beach, bit windy, but I loved the “WC for Dogs”.

I did get to see many white horses (not exactly “wild” these days) and black bulls.

And look! This is where Ricard! (the drink I was given in the Alps) comes from!

The lovely, well informed, but man of little english, tour guide explaining the habits of the flocks of flamingos behind us. Fortunately the Belgians and the Austrian girl could all speak at least 3 languages, so the english couple and I were fine.

As a further example, we were all able to understand the rather lengthy explanation of how this machine helped make rice production in the Camargue so uniquely productive….. (mmm, what I always needed to know).

Most importantly though, you have to remember that the Spanish bulls have horizontal horns (comical hand signals ensue) and the local bulls have vertical horns.



Tour over, I headed back to the car and was back on the road again – to the Pyrénées!