Travel to the Camargue

Thirza Vallois has a great article on the Camargue at France Today. Vallois is author of the three Around and About Paris guides. She's a consummate historian - those books on Paris are the only guidebooks necessary for the traveler who sees life in the context of history.

Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, "the cradle of Christianity in Western Europe" as Vallois puts it, is on the coast of the Camargue region. It's here that one version of the legend of the Magdalene has her coming to shore, with her "black servant Sara" who became patron saint of the European gypsies, and, "Eventually the village became a pilgrim destination for European gypsies, an ongoing tradition that draws thousands of gypsies from all over the Continent for the three-day event, May 24-26, along with huge crowds of spectators who turn up as much for the gypsy music and dancing as for the gypsies' fervent religious pilgrimage. After Mass on May 24, the statue of Sara is carried in procession all the way into the sea."


Sarah, by other accounts, is Mary Magdalene's daughter by Jesus.

The Templars make their way into the Camargue as well:

Paul Ricard (1909-1997) was another of the Camargue's pioneering visionaries. In 1939, by which time his future empire of "real Marseille pastis" was well under way, he bought a sprawling estate with a farmhouse, a former medieval domain of the Knights Templar-a Templar cross still stands on the site today. Called Méjanès (meaning halfway), it was situated midway between the two branches of the Rhône. There he intended to grow the licorice, fennel and mint that go into the iconic drink of Provence, but the war, and the Vichy government's ban on spirits the following year, forced him into alternative planning. Since he couldn't sell alcohol, he would use Méjanès to breed cattle for both milk and meat. But one way or another, the land was a salty wasteland and would need an irrigation system. The Knights Templar had been faced with the same challenge.

Ricard was also among the early pioneers of the Camargue rice industry, which now supplies 25 to 30 percent of the home market. He may have picked up on Henri IV's idea to introduce the staple to the Camargue-in Henri's case, they say it was to complement his favorite dish, poule au pot, although Ricard intended it principally as a means to desalinate the soil. The French associate Ricard's name with the famous anise-flavored pastis he created in 1932, mostly unaware that, if Parmentier taught their ancestors to eat potatoes, Paul Ricard was instrumental in teaching them to eat rice.

Exploring the Camargue by horseback, as Vallois says, is easy to do, safe, and unforgettable.

The young woman who guided us not only explained the local fauna and flora, but also talked about the differences between the French that she spoke and the French they taught in school - which she'd never understood too well. Her French was well flavored with the Provençal dialect.