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.
