LIVING IN FRANCE

Navigating The Wild & Mysterious Camargue. I’d Seen The Pink Flamingoes, Glimpsed The Black Bulls, The Windswept Beaches

But where were the iconic white horses galloping through the surf?

About an hour’s drive from the sea of vineyards that surround my village is a wild and windswept place called the Carmargue. A place of rice paddies, salt marshes and windswept beaches. Where pink flamingoes stand in shimmering lagoons, black bulls roam and French cowboys known as gardians ride the saltmarsh range.

And where an ancient breed of white horses gallop along the water’s edge.

I’ve driven numerous visitors through the Camargue. I’ve stopped the car for photographs —more than 400 species of migrating birds come through the Camargue’s wetlands, but the pink flamingoes steal the show. I pull over and maybe half a dozen or so will oblige by ascending en masse in a picturesque show of pink plumage. Then it's usually on to the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer for a seafood lunch at one of the cafes lining the picturesque waterfront.

It’s usually an enjoyable trip. My visitors are satisfied with their flamingo pictures and if they’re lucky maybe a shot of a white horse. By then they’ve usually had enough of driving endless back roads, and they’re ready to go on to Arles — VanGogh and Roman amphitheatres.

I oblige, but deep down, I feel a little like Peggy Lee. Even after umpteen trips, I wonder if that’s all there is to the Camargue. Enough with a couple of docile white horses feeding at a trough, where are the magical mystical wild horses, mains tossed by the wind, sending clouds of sea spray as they gallop through the surf?

I’ve never quite got the hang of navigating this vast 250,000-acre maze of back roads and marshes that seem to wind endlessly and go nowhere. Signage is virtually non-existent. Nothing that says turn left for iconic white horses galloping through the surf.

How do you find them? Where do you find them?

My friend Karen Constine found them.

We used to work together in Los Angeles — media relations for a large medical chain. I could fill a book with tales of some of our adventures, maybe someday I will. Or we will. We once collaborated on several freelance travel pieces for the Los Angeles Times. Since I moved to France nine years ago, we’ve seen each other a few times. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to meet up during her recent visit to France for a photography tour of the Camargue.

Where of course she captured some fantastic photos of the iconic white horses which she very kindly agreed to let me include in this story.

While my budget doesn’t run to photography tours, I was inspired enough by Karen’s photos to try to solve the navigation puzzle of the Camargue. If I’d found the site below a few years ago, my visitors might have returned home with more interesting pictures and memories — next time, I promise. Although, I did feel slightly vindicated to read that even after numerous trips, the authors felt there was ‘no obvious way through the Camargue.’

Here’s the link for those considering a tour of the Camargue, perhaps as part of a visit to southern France.

https://www.marvellous-provence.com/activities-and-sports/drives-and-rides/road/camargue-best-route

And a few more pictures of Camargue’s iconic horses.

Karen’s travels have taken her all over the world. To see more of her photography, please visit her website at: https://www.karenconstinephotography.com

Links to a few recent stories about my life in France