A Trip to The Camargue
Where France meets the Mediterranean. A wild empty wilderness, neither land or sea where beautiful wild white horses gallop through clouds of spray, nostrils flared, manes flying, the embodiment of equine freedom. This was the inner image of The Camargue that I had held for years, and now I was getting into a Land Rover to see it for myself.
Should you meet your heroes? Should you put boots on the ground of your landscapes of imagining? I think, yes, in both cases. Realise your ambitions, make it real.
The Land Rover left Arles and travelled down increasingly narrow and bumpy roads. The guide, Flavio, was excellent. He knew his stuff well and chatted amiably with his guest. We heard about Provencal bull coursing, where the bull and the men are on equal terms and no one gets killed. Wonderful! We saw local wildlife; flamingoes, bee eaters, butterflies, egrets. We saw Provencal bulls in fields and admired them. The white horses started to appear, but they were in fields, munching hay and a bit muddy. We pressed on, through the paddy fields to the furthest point of the trip, Saintes Maries de la Mer.
Here the trip went from vaguely disappointing to being completely surreal. Saintes Maries de la Mer is not a church by the sea commemorating obscure catholic saints. It’s a brash seaside town, with cafes, funfair, shopping streets and ice cream shops. It reminded me of Clacton or Hastings. Children scooted and screamed. Women pushed buggies. Men smoked and shook hands. Where are my sensuous white horses? I’ve been parachuted into a Bank Holiday weekend at the seaside by accident.
I suspected I was going slightly mad. I asked my wife what she was expecting. When she was a girl, she confided, she had a poster of white horses galloping in the surf. That was what she had come to see. So it’s not just me.
I asked the other two guests and they too were deeply puzzled. This wasn’t what they expected either.
So we asked Flavio. Where are the wild horses? There are none, he replied. The horses are all owned, none are wild. The Camargue is a National Park, but it is all private farmland. Some of the horses live in areas that are watery at certain times of the year. The photographs of these glorious beasts? Probably set up, he speculated. As a photographer myself, I knew that this was possible.
I was puzzled but not disappointed. The Camargue is what it is, it was me that was wrong. But so was my wife and our companions. How was the anticipation so misplaced? This will be one of the mysteries of my travels.
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