Day 24 - A la recherche des chevaux blancs et des flamants roses 🦩

In search of white horses and pink flamingos 🦩.....Heading east towards The Camargue region of France on the Mediterranean, famous for its wild white horses and the salt marches with the pink flamingos.

Half the journey would be back over the mountains then the rest would be down on to the flat lands, the heat, and eventually sand sea and salt marshes.

So, it was bye bye to Millau and the bridge in the morning haze....

....and hello to mountains, long straight roads left over from Roman times and more mountains; this time with no barriers at all to stop you going over the edge 😱...

It was all nice scenery, similar to a lot we had already seen but there is always something new, just around the corner....a tunnel. We like tunnels, we have been ok with tunnels, even tunnels with height restrictions and at first glance that's what this had; 4.1meters, we are 2.6m....so that's ok, but what's the other sign? wheelbase, width? 🤔

Whatever it was it suddenly dawned on us it was pretty much a single track thru the mountain and there had been no traffic lights to control the flow 😯.... go for it!

Just as we almost got thru a car came towards us, but luckily we could squeeze past each other using what ever the small lanes either side were; a van or a truck and we would have been stuck 🥴.

          As usual with a lot of these mountain roads, parking places and view points are hard to come by but we did find a 'sliver' of one on a bend which did us for lunch. You just had to check both ways before you even attempted to get out of the side of the van. Quail patie with grapes on crusty bread was the order of the day 😋

A few more mountain villages to pass thru then the scenery started to change, we were down on the flat now and the temperature was up to 29°C (84°F).

We had entered The Camargue...

...it was a place Jill had wanted to see since she was a child so it had to be done. 

     The original plan was to stay at a campsite by the sea that looked, on the campsite info on Google maps at least, to be shaded and quite with good facilities. Nope. 

    Reviews form only a few days ago said "dont go", "yes there are trees for shade but they have only just been planted, no shade, photos are wrong", "dirty, noisy", "twice as expensive as anywhere else in the region" etc, etc. We pulled into a hotel carpark, left the engine running and the air con on, shut the blinds over the windscreen to keep the sun out and started looking on the phones. 

      It was getting late, all the reviews for the area pretty much agreed, not great places. We didn't actually need any facilities as we were loaded with water, gas, food, beer and had an empty toilet so we could rough it if we needed too. In the end we settled on a large carpark by the sea, half the cost and take our chances;  was going to be quite or party all night!

20 minutes later we had arrived. We hadn't seen any horse's and we saw some birds in the distance but had no idea what they were 😞.

The site actually turned out ok. Lots of vans already parked up, sun shades our, tables, chairs, a mix of our age and families. Nobody in the booth at the gate so we just rolled in and picked a spot. Mixed reviews on the internet; the man comes round at night for the money; the woman comes round in the morning for the money; sign on the booth said something about between 10am and 1730. No idea what it all ment  and there where no Brits on site to ask, it was mainly all Germans. No electric hook up but 3x places to dump and fill with water. €15 a night. The beach was 2 min walk away over a little wooden bridge over a narrow canal 🤔.

We settled down with a beer. As the sun started to drop, but not the temperature, we could see other people reaching for the insect repellant. Jill had returned from a walk to the beach with 3 fresh bites but didnt let it bother her. She had some red wine to go with her pasta and garlic bread and was going to continue on Le Sock II, having now finished No.1 🤗

I loaded up on the insect repellents and wandered over to the beach to get some pics before the sun set. Still no sign of the ticket man to collect the money.

It was going to be a hot and sticky night, so it was quilts out of the covers and then use them as thin blankets or sleeping bags.

"I bet everybody is up early to get away from the ticket man lol".... "we might be if its too noisy or too hot 😞"     ..."night,night"..."night,night"