It is 9.30 on a mid-November morning. Not, perhaps, the ideal moment for a
visit to the beach, even a beach in the South of France. Yet here we are,
the photographer, Barrie, and I, making our way along the expanse of fine
sand that stretches away eastwards from the substantial village of Les
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the capital of the water-bound realm of herons and
flamingos, black bulls and white horses that is the Camargue.
Two days ago, we flew into Arles on a foul night of sheeting rain. Now the sun
shines fiercely above us in a wild, blue sky washed clear by the storm. To
our right, the little waves curl placidly at the shoreline and all around us
is a mass of white horses and their riders, trotting, walking, cantering,
curvetting, all moving towards a single destination: the starting-point of
the abrivado, due to begin at the far end of the beach at about
11am.
The abrivado is one of those curious institutions that grow up in
places where men and horses live and work together: part parade, part game,
part mounted party — a tradition sprung from the ancient Camarguais
tradition of ranching semi-wild bulls and horses over the unenclosed
marshland and scrub of the region. During the long abrivado season from
early autumn to late spring the guardians, as the cattle-ranchers are known,
round up selected bulls and escort them to bullfights in the arenas of the
villages with which the Camargue is sparsely scattered. This weekend in Les
Saintes-Maries is the climax of the season — a four-day festival attended by
horse and cattle ranchers from the entire region.
The atmosphere is festive. The high-octane tension and beady competitiveness
of large horsey gatherings in Britain is notably absent. There are no crowd
barriers, no police, no stewards yelling into walkie-talkies. Just the sky,
the sand, the sea — and wave upon wave of sturdy, trotting white horses.
Suddenly the tidal flow changes direction. Groups of horsemen, each with two
or three bulls embedded at its centre, move towards us at a brisk trot, like
the beginnings of a cavalry charge, each group so tightly packed that you
can only make out the bulls by crouching and looking for the black legs
among the trotting grey. As they move down the beach towards the arena in
the centre of the village, men on foot try to distract the horses and allow
the bulls to escape.
Another group sets off, then another and another, and all the route is lined
with yet more horses, hundreds of them, the mass of white undulating like
the waves of the sea behind us. We walk back along the beach, keeping pace
with the horses until we reach the village, where the roads are busy with
horse-boxes and the restaurants loud with celebrating guardians, putting
away huge plates of aioli and carafes of rosé, luxuriating in the sunshine,
the festival atmosphere and the company of friends.
The glorious conviviality of the abrivado at Les Saintes-Maries is the mirror
image of the Camargue’s other great attraction, its wild and beautiful
emptiness. Sparsely populated by humans, the reed-beds, marshes,
water-meadows and scrub remain the lonely realm of animals semi-domesticated
and wild, of bulls and horses, but also of egrets, herons, bittern and
flamingo, flocks of which administer a shock of strangeness as you spot
their sugar-pink geometry of swooping curves and languid angles.
The best way to explore the secret life of this mysterious terrain is to be
out in it, on foot, perhaps taking one of the guided walks offered in the
Marais du Vigueirat, a conservation area of reed-bed and marsh just east of
the Camargue proper, exploring by bicycle or in traditional fashion, on
horseback. Almost any countryside, and especially a marshy flatland such as
the Camargue, looks better from the back of a horse, as we found on a visit
to Le Mas de Peint, a working cattle and horse ranch with a country house
hotel at its centre, owned and un by the Bon family — Jacques, a figure of
raffish elegance with a snow-white moustache and braid-trimmed velvet
jacket, his architect wife, Lucille, and their son, Frederick. The hotel was
converted by the Bon family from a 17th-century barn and pigeon-house of
pale gold stone, built around three sides of a courtyard.
Stepping into the stone-flagged hall is like wandering into someone’s private
house — smells of beeswax and wood smoke, graceful arrangements of antique
furniture and everywhere, from the table-cloths to the white linen sheets,
the Bon cattle brand, a B surmounted by a cross.
In the stable block, Frederick and another guardian were waiting with a trio
of tough little grey geldings. In past centuries, the Camargue horses ran
semi-wild for much of the year, rounded up annually for inspection, branding
and gelding. In the modern Camargue, many lead a more domestic life, working
as riding-horses for tourists. The breed is of ancient origin, compact and
stocky with a large, square head that hints at its primitive ancestry.
Firmly lodged in Jacques Bon’s deep herdsman’s saddles, we jumped a small
ditch and found ourselves in a marshland full of black cattle with long,
cave-painting horns. Frederick and his fellow guardian vanished to round up
some stragglers, leaving me surrounded by a thicket of pointed horns and
foghorn bellows, though the ferocious aspect of the cattle belies a
phlegmatic nature — at any rate, they seemed inclined to ignore us.
“The Camargue,” wrote the Provençal author Jean Giono, “conceals its mystery
behind its very revelation.” Poised on horseback between the sky and the
land, surrounded by the elemental sights and sounds of the semi-tamed
wilderness, you feel like a witness to something rare: a harsh, primeval
beauty, softened and made palatable by the tourist ranches, the comfortable
hotels and restaurants, but still there, still a mystery in this ambiguous
terrain, neither land nor water, that is the Camargue.
Need to know
Getting there: Jane Shilling travelled from Stansted to
Montpellier with Ryanair (0871 2460000, www.ryanair.com). Return fares from
£31. Car rental with Europcar (www.europcar. fr) from Montpellier airport
starts at £166 a week.
Where to stay: Hotel le Mas de Peint, Arles (00 33 4 90 97 20
62, www.masdepeint.com), doubles £138. Hotel Mangio Fango, Les Saintes-
Maries-de-la-Mer (90 97 80 56, www.hotelmangio fango.com), doubles £44.
Information: www.marais-vigueirat.reserves-naturelles.org.
French Tourist Board (0906 8244123, www.franceguide.com)
