Sights of the Saône and Rhône (From Hampshire Society)

Sights of the Saône and Rhône

2:55pm Monday 6th July 2009

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A cloud of dusty pink flamingos wheels indignant into infinite, white-blue skies above cornfields and the dark black bulk of fighting bulls.

These are the colours of the Camargue, a vast, wild, salty swamp in the sun baked south of France.

I’m standing in a rickety jeep, head poking up through a lean-to scaffolding framework on the back and a billowing plume of dust kicking up behind.

In the front seat is perhaps the most French man I have ever met.

Beneath tousled black, gypsy hair and UV seared skin, Paul revels in tales of hunting wild boar grown fat on the rice they farm here. All the time, laughing his head off at how, with bellyfuls of rice, there’s no need to cook separate vegetables. He whips the steering wheel around, abruptly navigating a shifting maze of deep mud ruts.

Brakes whine and the jeep comes to sharp stop, throwing us against the metal frame and Paul is whispering urgently.

There, on the other side of the road are the bone-white wild horses that are emblematic of this river delta. And then suddenly they’re everywhere. Gentle and unafraid, yet unmistakeably wild, they mingle with the fighting bulls.

You have to be hardy to live out here in the salty end of the great river Rhône, which is what had carried us here.

The Camargue was a fecund full stop on a journey that had started nearly a week earlier in Lyon – the gastronomic capital of one of the most food-obsessed nations on Earth. In short, a very good place to pop out for a bite.

Here we had enjoyed gigantic local sausages in brioche and gazed in wonder at a menu proffering ox tripe, sheep’s feet and shredded pork knuckle. Here, in the humble brasseries of France’s stunning second city, offal is something of a celebrated art form and a silk purse is the last thing you’d make with something as tasty as a sow’s ear.

From Lyon’s soaring spires we sailed up the wine list in our Peter Deilmann cruise vessel, the ageing but elegant MV Princesse de Provence.

First it was north along the River Saône, with water lapping at the midway point on the window of our tight but nonetheless comfortable cabin.

A night of travel took us to Macon and afforded a slurp of some of the great white wine of Burgundy. In thickly arched, dungeon-cellars beneath the ancient castle of Pierreclos we tasted the heady, mineral-dry whites that have made Pouilly-Fuisse a legend.

It was not to be a one-off, with the cruise winding its way the length of the Rhône Valley and past some of the greatest wines on the planet – Hermitage, Côte Rôtie and, of course, Chateau Neuf du Pape.

Helpful staff on board helped match bottle to plate – and what a lot of plates there were, with the waiters serving up a daily diet of many, many courses, lunches and dinners and evening suppers, too.

It’s a special joy of river travel to retire to the top deck at night, full and content and with a bottle of something good. There, beneath the broad spread of stars, the sound of rushing water – the engine virtually inaudible – is soothing and hypnotic.

The river throws other unexpected fascinations at you. You drift past nameless Gothic fortresses, ablaze with light at night; vast nuclear power stations like the set from Bladerunner and thickly-vined hillsides that switch to mountain and back in minutes.

And then you arrive in Avignon.

As a boy obsessed with castles, I used to dream of seeing a proper one. Complete. Not ruined and teeming with life. And here it is.

Thick stone walls wrap around a medieval city and the jaw-dropping palace of the popes, which is where seven successive popes holed-up after fleeing Rome in the 14th century.

It’s more impressive outside than in, however a trip around the inside does reveal their Holinesses kept their glittering wealth stashed beneath the floorboards – literally.

It’s the same further down river in Arles – another largely unscathed survivor from the Middle Ages.

Later, after a groaning plate of seafood and beef stew made from the dark, flavourful rich meat of the semi-wild bulls he had shown us, we went to see them in action again; this time in the Roman amphitheatre that is at the heart of this beautiful place.

We gulped water and pressed back against the cool Roman stone, out of the scorching 40 degree sun to watch a Provencal bullfight. Remote from its Spanish counterpart, there is no Death in the Afternoon here. Instead, local youngsters compete to nick bright red ribbons tied around the agile bull’s horns.

The magnificence of Arles represents the end of the easily navigable line for the Rhône cruise, with the Mediterranean yawning beyond.

In just a week, we had seen so much, done so much and, frankly, eaten so much it is perhaps surprising then that all this had shown us was that there was still so much left to do.

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