Spring and the Camargue

More Signs Of Spring
Went shopping yesterday and noticed that the supermarket is now selling locally grown strawberries. There have been strawberries occasionally for a few weeks now but here there is not the year-round supply of everything that one finds in UK supermarkets. French supermarkets have to source a high fairly percentage of fresh produce locally and so the produce available tends to be more seasonal. For the past few weeks the strawberries have been from Morocco but now those from Carpentras are appearing, including the “garrigues”, also from Carpentras, smaller and less shapely than their Moroccan counterparts but with much better flavour. Despite the shift towards organic produce, in England as much as in France, I still don't see any acceptance in England of fruit/veg that is discoloured or misshapen even if the flavour is far superior. Also, I saw local asparagus for the first time. The asparagus season here is much earlier than in the UK and goes on for longer; and the asparagus is much cheaper (eventually, if not at first).

Flowers by the wayside and in gardens are much as in the UK at this time. The usual spring bulbs, primroses and violets and forsythia and japonica bushes. Irises aren't showing much bud yet but they won't be far behind and when they do start blooming they appear everywhere in gardens and in the wild. And....... I've turned off the heating other than in the living room and kitchen; that should be it until October.

And So To The Camargue
Friends Steve and Jo and I have been promising ourselves a trip to the coast since Christmas but the prolonged winter delayed the trip. Today we finally went, to Saintes Maries de la Mer, self-styled capital of the Camargue (Arles and Aigues Mortes might have something to say about that). I had assumed that the reality would be different from the romantic image of wild horses dashing through the marshes with manes flying but, even so, the reality was more prosaic than I had thought. There were plenty of white horses and black bulls but the former were corralled into establishments offering horse riding. True, the pink flamingos were there too. But the wild marshes of romance have been pretty much all tamed, probably for a long time.

A visit to the Camargue museum told the story. In the early 19th century the Camargue in France had been viewed very much as Dartmoor in England; far from being a tourist attraction, it was a poor, isolated, bereft and dangerous place to be avoided. Gradually, drainage allowed some of the land to be cultivated for wheat, although it can hardly have been ideal for that, and land was made available for sheep grazing. Some wheat planting is still evident but the sheep seem to have disappeared. A legacy of the sheep rearing is the presence of many long low buildings formerly used to house them in winter that are now put to other purposes. They have a singular style, rounded at the north end to divert the wind, blunt at the southern end and with thatched roofs made from the reeds in the marshes. For some unexplained reason, they normally had nine lateral wooden spars either side to support the roof.

Apparently there was a kind of South Sea Bubble phenomenon at the end of the 19th century when, around 1870, phylloxera killed most French vines. Minimal vine cultivation in the Camargue proved immune to phylloxera, probably because the roots were normally submerged in water and sand. Suddenly, the Camargue became the centre of wine production for France and the land was taken over by vines. However, the area produces only low-alcohol wine which was traditionally cut with wine from north Africa to produce an acceptable table wine. So, when a solution was found to the phylloxera problem, in 1907, the Bubble burst; grape production in the Camargue that year was simply not harvested at all.

A substitute was found in 1942 when some bright spark realised that the area would be suitable for cultivation of rice, which was then in short supply because of the war. Now, Camargue rice commands something of a premium price, although I have to confess I can't discern much difference between it and long grain rice from elsewhere. The area is still marshland, albeit much of it drained, and a haven for birds that thrive in that habitat. So it will be a major attraction for bird enthusiasts.

For myself, I had a great day out in bright warm sunshine with friends and a very enjoyable lunch on a cafe balcony overlooking the sea. I'm glad to have seen something of the Camargue and would like to return, sometime, to see more. But I can't imagine that it will ever be for me an area that I will want to spend any length of time in. It's good to know it's just an hour and a half's drive away so another day trip will be easy.