Up quite early and drove about 25kms to Hyeres, a lovely old town, where we managed to find a parking place(!), so we spent most of the morning wandering around the stalls and little local shops. We then moved on to Gemenos, just outside Marseilles, where we parked up on the town’s small aire and later heard some kind of a band playing, so went to investigate and found a band of musicians, mostly recorder type instruments and a few drums, who were accompanying some Morris men type of dancers through the town. Talking to some locals I found out that this is an annual festival; the next week would be centred around horsemen through the forests.
Gemenos' festival music
We had hoped to bus into Marseilles from Gemonos but, although very close, there wasn’t a direct one, so we just drove there early in the morning, hoping we’d manage to find somewhere to park. We weren’t entirely unsuccessful, we drove up to the cathedral carpark and, we hope, have some good panoramic photos on the camera but, after that, couldn’t find anywhere for the ‘van, so we cursed once again and decided to move further round the coast.
Camargue horses
John wanted to visit the Camargue because he was hoping to see its wild horses. He got a brief glimpse of about half a dozen as we were driving to Port St. Louis, but over the next 4 days in the area all the others that we saw were fenced in and used for the riding schools which abound in the area. The camperstop there had been moved and appeared to have been re-sited on the grounds of an old industrial site so we carried on to the next one at Salin-de-Giraud, which meant taking the ferry boat across the Grande Rhone en route, quite a novel experience.
We found the site, from where we took an evening walk amongst the salt flats and suffered for days afterwards from the mosquito bites!
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