Arles Monday 5 May, Day 12

Today we took a tour to the Carmargue and the historic town of Saintes-Marie de la Mer. We were in the back of an old long wheelbase Landrover, the suspension of which had seen better days, we discovered as we bounced down the dusty pot-holed back roads. I can see why ornithologists get excited about the place - there were large flocks of flamingos, terns, herons, egrets, gulls, ducks, swans and other types I could identify, as well as lots of chaps toting expensive and very substantial lens stalking purposefully down the little back roads. In autumn the wetlands are really packed with migratory birds - over 350 species.  Flamingos breed and live permanently in the Camargue wetlands.

The Camargue is famous for its horses which are a unique breed, white and stocky, strong looking animals which were wild until a few decades ago. The foals are born dark brown or black but become white by age one. Camargue bulls are also a specific breed and the locals seem very patriotic about them.  They are always black, smaller than Spanish bulls and have horns growing upward.  Spanish bulls are bred in the Camargue for bullfights which still take place in Ste-Marie and Arles.  We saw so many Camargue horses, foals, and bulls of all ages (kept in paddocks with their age peers) that we thought we'd never get to the ancient Church by the sea.

The town of St Marie de Le Mere sits at mouth of the Petit Rhône on the Mediterranean  and has been a site of human habitation since well before the Romans arrived. I don't know what the earlier inhabitants would make of the town today. It is cheerful mix of hotels, market, bars, restaurants and souvenir shops.  The church Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is Romanesque with a stone barrel vaulted ceiling. It was built in the 9th century on the site of a much older building, and still has what is called a pagan altar in the crypt.

The Church was used as a place of refuge for the villagers during raids by Vikings and Saracens. The roof of the crypt of the church is black with smoke from centuries of candles, and it houses the statue of Saint Sara, the patron saint of the Romani people. On 24th May each year, there is a Roma festival where the statue is taken down to the sea and immersed in the water and then paraded through the town with the horses and bulls adorned with flowers. Saint Sara is taken very seriously - the crypt was hot from the banks of burning candles offered in her honour, and there were queues waiting to pay their respects to her. Upstairs there are paintings of the two Marys who left Jerusalem in a boat and were washed ashore here.  The two Marys are the sisters of the Virgin Mary, the three daughters of St Anne by her three husbands.  We saw paintings of these same stories in Spain. They seem to belong to a much older version of the Catholic canon.