CamargueFriday the 13th of October. We would try our luck in the Camargue, along the Mediterranean coast, at the mouth of the Rhone. It is actually the Rhone River's delta. It is known for three subjects of interest to photographers: flamingos, bulls and yippie!!, Horses! Beautiful white horses! This was the off season for the flamingos. Most of them winter over in North Africa and come to the Rhone delta in spring to mate and raise their young. After the chicks fledge in Aug/Sept most of them go back south. 10-15,000 birds is typical. But about 5,000 stay all winter so finding some to photograph is easy. But getting them doing something interesting is hard. The best time to photograph most birds is when they are courting, nesting, feeding, or fighting. That mostly happens in the spring. But you can see below that we did find some flamingos.
The symbol below is the Camargue trademark. We saw it displayed everywhere. It stands for the three cardinal virtues: the cross for faith, the anchor for hope, the heart for love.
After lunch we still needed to find some horses. The white horses of the Camargue are one of the oldest distinct breeds in existence. They were living there wild before they were ever domesticated by man and they are sometimes described as wild but that is an overstatement. They do live in the marshes year round, many of them are unbroken and unshod, but they actually do belong to somebody. We soon happened upon a couple of mares with their foals. Those are always good for a picture.
Pont du Gard and AvignonThurs Oct 12 was our first full day in Uzes and we hit the ground running. We would see the great Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard as well as the town of Avignon. But first let me give some background on why this area is so so rich in cool stuff to see. Background did you say? Isn't that another word for History? Yep, I'm at it again, force feeding you my interest in History. I'll make it brief. Sort of. So when Rome defeated Carthage in the Punic Wars the areas that had been in the Carthaginian Empire fell to Rome. This included southern France and this was well before the Caesars took over as emperors. The Romans began to make their mark from this early date and by the time Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in 52 BC the area from Uzes south had already been absorbed into Roman civilization. The Roman's love of big building projects is on display and many of them are remarkably well preserved. Then when Rome fell, the Franks moved in and built their feudal society, based on much more local, decentralizes power, so the castles and walled towns popped up. They are still there too. And the monasteries!! Lots of those and you all know I love monasteries! On top of that the Pope moved to Avignon in 1309 so there's this rich layer of Church history as well. The jarring thing about all of this is the density of it. Everything we saw, and everything you will see in this entire blog, is within 60 miles of Uzes. Nothing more than 90 minutes away and that's taking the backroads. Several days we took in two sites. Like today. We will first see the Pont du Gard, the highest aqueduct the Romans built anywhere, and then drive over to Avignon for the rest of the day. Shall we begin? As I mentioned, the Pont du Gard is the highest aqueduct the Romans ever built. It was completed in mid first century and took 1000 men five years. The aqueduct system was bringing water from Uzes to Nimes, the provincial headquarters. Quite an impressive piece of engineering but the really impressive little factoid is that the spring at Uzes is only 56 ft above the collection basin at Nimes 31 miles away This slight gradient had to be maintained along the entire route to keep the water flowing. So the three tier structure you see below, with the massive limestone blocks, had to be accurate to a fraction of an inch.
Just a short jaunt down the road is the medieval town of Avignon. Its location on the Rhone river made it a strategic spot during feudal times. The main interest now is the Papal Palace but it was such a gorgeous day, and it was getting late, that we decided to forgo that tour and just walk around the town. We would come back on a rainy day to check out the Pope's digs.
Greetings, Everyone from the Sunny South (of France)Hello Everyone! Yes, I'm back already with another trip to report. We had been talking with our traveling companions, Rollie and Boo Conner, about this trip since 2018. It was finally time to do it. And we are glad we did. It was a great trip. We flew across on Oct 9th, landing in London on the 10th and connected to Marseille. We stayed the night there, planning to meet our friends the next day. Jeanne Marie found us a nice little hotel just a very short walk from the village of Saint-Victoret. There's a lovely little waterfall right where you enter the village, a nice little church and all of the casual street food goodies of French cuisine. Crepes, croissants, omelettes, ham on buttered baguette, pain au chocolat... We did not hesitate. The gorging commensed immediately!
Now I’ve been reading for years that the South of France has way more in common with the rest of the Mediterranean than with the part of the country, say across from England. This was a well known fact to me. But is still quite jarring to see Italy or Spain everywhere I looked. This was obvious even coming in on the plane. Tile roofs, pinnacle pines, olive trees, architecture, umbrella pines, even the color of the dirt, all made me think “Italy”. Not only that but as we shall see in future posts, there are Roman ruins everywhere. The Conners arrived on schedule the next day, the rental car was retrieved, and we were on our way to the medieval town of Uzes, about an hour and thirty minutes northwest, where we would be based for the next two weeks. Uzes is a town of about 8,000 which made it the perfect size for our needs. It had the groceries, bakeries, restaurants, churches etc but we could easily walk the entire town. We soon established the routine of walking up to the cafe for fresh pastries and coffee in the morning. Here's a quick glimpse of the town.
More about Uzes in future posts. Black and WhiteSo now for the really fun part! Black and White!! As gorgeous as Ireland is in color, forty shades of green and all, the opportunities for black and white are tremendous. So many abbeys, so many monasteries! Some of these images you've already seen in color so I won't redo the narrative. I just loaded all of them into two slide shows below.
Back to DublinSat Sept 16 True to form after the rainy day we had clear skies for our trip back to Dublin. We couldn't drive through Ireland for three hours without stopping somewhere though. First was the village of Shannonbridge, where we have fond memories from the 2009 and 2013 trips. The old stone fort guarding the bridge is now a restaurant so we pulled in there just as the motorcycle club was leaving.
The road through the village was the main Galway to Dublin road for centuries before the new motorway bypassed it. It has now become "road trip alley". As soon as the motorcycles roared off a Triumph sports car club paraded in. So we got our own little car show.
Now here's a question I've often pondered. How many Irishmen does it take to fix an English sports car?
We had time for one more outing and I've always wanted to check out the village of Howth, which is right on the northern tip of the entrance to Dublin Bay. It is a charming little town with lovely cliff walks and the Baily Lighthouse. Unfortunately the overcast rolled back in which meant the light would fade fast. So we made for the lighthouse and used what light we had left there. I did long exposures to smooth out the water.
So that was our very excellent trip to Ireland, 2023. You have only to endure the black and white pictures and we are done with this blog. Except that I'm writing this from France. I'll be getting started on that one soon. |
