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Horsemeat in Vincent’s City

by Paul Edwards

Most white horses weren’t always that way. Like us, they turn white as they get older.  But the wild white horses of the Camargue are born white, creating a stunning visual effect as they race across the semi-desert delta of the Rhone.

They are tended by the French equivalents of John Wayne, known as gardians, and it was one of these - a hairy, black-eyed fellow called Marcel – who pointed out the best-looking of the herd.

“Beau cheval, eh? Vous avez un cheval comme ca en Australie?”

Well no, actually. I was a bit light on for wild white horses back home.  But it certainly was a fine cheval, not tall at the withers but barrel chested and powerful in the rump.  Incredibly fast over a few metres, which is what you need when you’re rounding up bulls for the arena.

And that’s what Marcel was about – providing black bulls for the bullfights in the ancient amphitheatre in Arles, where 2000 years ago they were feeding Christians to lions.  Or so they story goes.

Anyway, more later about horse and me. First I’ll try to describe Arles and its environs.

In the unlikely event that some greater being were to grant me a holiday during which I must not stray outside one small region, that place would be the Bouches du Rhone – the mouths of France’s great southern river.

With Arles at the centre, the little world spreads to the Alpilles and the Camargue; east to rugged Garlaban mountain made famous by Marcel Pagnol; west to Nimes and Aigues Mortes.

Of course, no place is perfect, but this goes as close as you’ll get, and within a radius of 30 kilometres are most of the ingredients for an almost perfect holiday.

In April or May Arles is starting to warm up.  The cowboys on the Camargue – that lunar landscape where the Rhone branches around salty desert flats – are rounding up the bulls, which if not exactly wild are certainly pretty furious.

Maybe because they sense their next journey may be their last, for lethal Spanish-style corridas are becoming more popular than the traditional courses Camarguaises, the fun fights in which the bull doesn’t get hurt.

The gardians riding those white horses towards the shores of the Mediterranean occasionally scatter Europe’s only flocks of flamingos, which ballet-step through the waters of the delta and its etangs – shallow, salty lakes.

Many people have been here through the centuries. Hannibal, the African warrior who made his way from Carthage to the back door of Rome, brought his war elephants here.

Later, Europe’s turbulent history caused the Roman Catholic church to establish here for a while, at Avignon, where everyone dances en ronde.

After the Popes came the artists – writer Fredric Mistral, who named himself after the ferocious wind that howls down the Rhone valley from time to time.  Mistral was the mystical poet who almost single-handed saved the ancient Occitan and Provencal tongues.

Alphonse Daudet was here, and the mill on which he based his novel Lettres de Mon Moulin still stands.  Writer and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol knew this area well, and would escape the toughness of Marseille by retreating to this gentle region to write his bucolic novels.

And then there was Vincent, the most famous one-eared drunken pauper genius that Arles has known.  In a frenzy of creativity the tortured Van Gogh painted his cafes, his sunflowers, his women and himself.  He failed to sell even one and died in despair.

People come to Arles to explore its Roman remains – the wonderful arena and the impressive baths – and its many mediaeval buildings.  They also like the streetscapes, even the roofscapes of uneven pantiles clustered above ancient dwellings.

Arles, from April to late September, means heat and golden light, shining on the wide Rhone and the many little squares that come to life early in the morning. They still smell of Gauloises, coffee and bread in the way that a French square should.

There is a wonderful market, famous for its fresh produce, grown in the sandy loams of the Rhone floodplains. There you can also buy sausages made from donkey and equally disgusting things from the sea. 

Near the market place are Les Alyscamps – the Elysian Fields that have housed sarcophagi since the Romans were here.  The fields of the dead have been pillaged over the centuries and now have just one street of ancient tombs, but it remains a sombre and impressive place.

Just a little way out of Arles are many wonderful sights. Aigues Mortes is a walled town rising from the sea plain like a mirage, or a location from El Cid. Inside the walls is the inevitable bazaar of tourist shops, but everyone seems in a good humour in the midday sun and even the trinkets have a distinctive élan.

Due south of Arles, just a 20-minute drive across the Camargue, is the town called Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.  At once workaday, commercialised and mysterious, the town is famous for its May and October invasions of Romany from all over Europe, who come to celebrate the life of Sarah, their queen.

You are on the sands of the Mediterranean here, looking south towards Africa, and it was across these waters 2000 years ago that three women called Mary fled persecution in the Holy Land. They were Mary, sister of the Virgin, Mary Magdalen and Mary the mother of apostles John and James. They came here with their black maidservant Sarah, or so another story goes.

You might choose not to go as far as Nimes and Avignon, both within an hour of Arles, but settle for the more compact attractions of the villages of Les Baux and Fontaine de Vaucluse. 

If so, you would be committing a traveller’s sin, since each of the two provincial capitals deserves several days.  But you could reflect that there are many other towns baking in the southern sun; other ancient ruins and shady squares where you can sip a pastis and watch a game of petanque.

However, there is nowhere like Les Baux.  This is a spectacular crumbling citadel, slowly returning to the rocks on which it stands and from which it was carved.  Those rocks gave the place its name, for they contain bauxite, the aluminium ore that was discovered here.

Les Baux is wild, weird and trendy. Perched on an outcrop of the Alpilles range of hills, the dead village and ruined castle were the stronghold of mediaeval warrior barons who ruled the hills and plains around here until brought undone by debauchery and revolution. Of course.

Some of the best restaurants and hotels in France are now packed around the escarpment, and no matter when you visit this magical little place you will never be alone.

Similarly, there is no shortage of tourists at the Fontaine de Vaucluse.  This is an astonishing place – just a little old village on the banks of a fast flowing river, clear as crystal, with swirling weeds and darting schools of small fish. Straddling the stream is an old paper mill, where wonderful stationery is still made by hand.

Walk along the paved banks, follow the river upstream and – whoa! Where’s she gone?  The wide, swift stream has disappeared under a beetling cliff hundreds of metres high. This is an amazing sight – the Sorgue River emerges full-grown from a hole in the limestone. It is one of the most powerful springs on earth.

There have been many attempts to trace the Sorgue beyond this rocky door.  Jacques Cousteau and the French Army have tried to plumb its depths and a robot submarine has been down 315 metres without conclusively touching bottom. You’ll have to pay to park and see this intriguing spectacle, but that’s the way with spectacles these days.

From the Fontaine back to Arles takes no time at all.  The old town has wonderful restaurants catering for all tastes, and I thought they were catering for mine when, in a very small bistro just off the Place Voltaire, I ordered escalope with frites.

The little eating-house was dark and pungent, one of the few to have escaped the renovator’s touch. The steak was also dark and pungent; tender but powerful in taste and texture; deep red where more delicate cuts, such as fillet, are pink.

I had never seen steak so ruby-red, I thought, and then as I pushed my empty plate aside I saw something I had previously missed - an almost obscured chalk item on the blackboard menu.  A single scrawled word.  One guilt-inducing word. Cheval.

Oh, my proud white stallion of the Camargue, what can I say?  Does ‘sorry’ help?

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