Day 1 Arles to Saint-Gilles, 22 km

Walking again! Such a great thing. The first day of a trip is full of remembering - oh this is how I do this! This is what it feels like! Nice to stop obsessing about walking and just walk. It’s the best thing.

It was a perfectly fine first day. Very chilly start in Arles, despite the sun. But eventually the wind died down, some layers came off. And the weather was really pleasant. There was no coffee at the hotel where I was staying this morning, which gave me a good excuse to go to the fancy coffee shop around the corner. I didn’t get away until about 10:15. Stopped at a boulangerie to get a sandwich and then made my way out of the city. The only particularly notable moment of the exit was crossing the river Rhône. It’s almost at its end at that point, and it’s huge. It is not the longest river in France, but apparently it has the most water. No markings to help you on your way until you are a good ways out of town. I was glad I had downloaded a gps track.

The route was flat, flat, flat. For most of the day I walked along a small paved road, flanked on both sides by marshy farmland. This is the definition of the Camargue - wet, flat, home to white horses and black cattle, some of whom are raised for meat and some to be used in a kind of bull running event in which the humans try to take a cockade (I had to look this up - it’s a rosette or decoration usually made of ribbon) off the head of the bull - rather than kill him. The big “field” crop in the Camargue is rice. I saw a rice research Institute, but I do not think I saw any rice paddies. I did see an enclosure with about 7 or 8 of the black cattle, who announced themselves with cheerful cowbells. They were frolicking, which is not what you expect to see when people are talking about the taureux! All along the road I passed gates for Mas this and Mas that. A mas is a farm, maybe a bit more like a ranch or a hacienda. In this region they have no windows on the north side to protect against the Mistral wind. Most of those I passed were quite hidden from the road. All you see when walking by are the gates. So it’s a lonely (but not creepy) road.

The Camargue is the land/delta that lays between the (Grand) Rhône River and the Petit Rhône. I crossed the first in the morning, leaving Arles, and the second just outside Saint-Gilles. Part of the route went through the Parc Naturel Régional Camargue, though I could not say where. I saw no signs for that. Lots of raptors, big and small. And sea birds that I think were terns. Some butterflies.

It seems like I’ve landed in late spring/early summer. Not all the trees have leaves, but most do, at various stages of unraveling. There are buttercups and other flowers blooming in the ditches, fruit trees with blossoms.

On the way into St Gilles you walk through a little industrial area, along a canal, past a circus tent, and past dozens and dozens of rental boats on the water. I’m staying in a private gîte. There are three of us here. Two other women have a double room upstairs, and I have a bed in the 3-bed dormitory, which I have all to myself. It is a massive stone house. I am guessing the ceiling in this room is about 15’ high. But the door to enter it is only about 5’ high! The owners prepared a fantastic dinner. Fancy bakeoff worthy chorizo bread-thing, shaped like the sun, followed by salmon and (local) rice with fresh radishes and then chocolate cake. Demi pension (bed, dinner, breakfast) is 40€. Demi-pension is one of the very good things about walking in France!Read more