Because yesterday was such a "big" day, we decided to make a leisurely start and after the morning walk in to town for bread etc, we set out at 10.30 for the one hour drive to the wildest eastern side of the Camargue. The Camargue is western Europe's largest delta. 820 sq kilometres of which 1/3 is either lakes or marshes.

It is the home of a wide variety of birdlife, the most famous being the flamingos which certainly were a hit with Ches. She could have spent all day just sitting and watching them, when we eventually found them. Tom had difficulty finding most of the very small settlements down the eastern side and we fell back on our "AA Road Atlas of France" that is now very worn after 14 years of service. Even using this, some of the names were in such small print we should have brought a magnifying glass.

Once on the D36B (I think) or C, after Villeneurve (which you could blink and miss), the road was more potholes than road. We managed to hit most of them. The wind was howling and there were mostly wetlands on either side of the road. Suddenly, three pink flamingos .... a couple of hundred metres away. Persevering to try to get photos that won't be blurred as the wind buffets me. The same 200 metres further on when there are around 30 or so, 400 metres away ... pink dots among the choppy water.

Another couple of hundred metres and there is what looks like a tourist office and wildlife park. Apparently this is paradise for Birdwatchers. What's the plural, Twitters or Twitterers? It didn't look too inviting and when we asked what we might see, she looked in the visitors book for the morning and said the names of maybe three birds. Apparently Twitterers record the birds they see. Given that we would only be able to record, "very small, small, medium or large" with colour, and there are 340 varieties of birds, we decided it wasn't for us. She did however advise that on the western side, there was a refuge where they fed the flamingos and therefore we could expect to see more of them and closer up.

Once back to Villeneurve, the road across to the west is very well paved and an easier drive. Only the occasional white horse and bull to see and drainage canals on either side of the road suggest that this might be where there is some agriculture, including the famous Camargue Red Rice.

It was probably around 1.00 when we arrived at the reserve. Bloody hell, talk about telephoto lens envy. The place was crawling with Twitterers all lugging cameras with lenses that could photograph the surface of the moon.

Does size really matter? Not to me when the Flamingos are all withing 10 to 100 metres away. There must have been many thousands in around 10 flocks and I photographed every one of them, but didn't note their names. I also videod extensively. You must come to our flamingo night when we return.

When we were parking the car, the police warned us not to leave anything in the car. Now, that sort of general warning is given throughout Provence however I suspect the large gypsy population of the Camargue might warrant special care.

There is also a strong Spanish influence. I'm not sure about why or how long it goes back.

We eventually left the park to drive to Aigues-Morte, and arrived at 2.30ish. Along the way, plenty of the famous white horses and black bulls, bred for both the bull ring and their meat. Both are actually quite small. The bull fighting season starts in Arles this weekend (hence all the seating erected inside the Amphitheatre yesterday). I had thought is was less bloodthirsty than Spanish bullfighting, but apparently not so. Arles is only allowed to continue with it because there is an unbroken history of bullfighting, and it now ever attracts female fighters who ware skintight costumes. Now that doesn't sound like tradition.

I guess it's because of the time of the year however we found a parking spot just outside the main gate. Paid parking, but at 9.50E and we were going to be there till 10.30 pm at least, worth it.

Most of the commercial operation in Aigues-Morte are in the streets just inside the main gate and in the streets around the Place St Louis. Basically, all the restaurants and shops are in the northern corner and that leaves the rest of the town, enclosed in the walls built in the 13th century and 1.65 km long, as residential.

We shared a baguette filled with ham and Emmental cheese .... it was so simple but so good, while we sought out the tourist office and the one public toilet. Success with the first but not with the second. We returned to the cafe near the entrance where I ordered a coffee so that Ches could use their toilet. While waiting, Carolyn and Glen from Melbourne introduced themselves. They and two other couples bought a mobile home which they garage in Surrey. Every year they have it for three months to travel Europe. Good points and bad and unlikely that Ches would ever agree after experiencing a Uniworld cruise.

As the walls (ramparts) close at 5.00pm, we decided to walk them first and explore the town between 5.00 and 7.30 when we were booked for dinner at "Le Particulier"

Apart form beginning at the Constance Tower which Louis 1V built in 1248 and has six metre thick walls, almost every wall has gates or towers with an interesting story. Two of the most interesting are a section where two windmills were built in the 17th century and and Tour dela Poudriere, where in 1431 during The 100 Year War the Armagnacs attacked the town and killed so many defending Bourguignons that they dumped their bodies in the tower and packed them in salt. True????

We were having a leisurely walk of the walls when come 4.30, the attendants who had begun walking the reverse direction on the walls, told us we would have to leave as they were closing at 5.00 In France, that means the gates are locked at 5.00 and the attendants go home. They walk the reverse direction sweeping all before them and by the time they get back to the entrance it is 5.00 and there isn't a tourist left. It's almost German inits efficiency. Our choice was to walk with them back around the ramparts or have them let us through a gate over one of the entrances to descend to the street inside the walls. The latter was our option, and Ches walked around the inside to do some shopping while I walked the outside to photograph.

I found her coming out of a shop 30 min later. As she still had shopping to do, I took up residence at a table in Place St Louis with a beer ... or two, and watched the world go by. While there were a few tourists also have a beer, there were as many locals. France is in the middle of local council elections and a battle between the far-right National Front and all other parties. Later when going for dinner at 7.30, there was a rally in Place St Louis. Now there is a contrast; a political rally in front of a statue of Louis 1V and beside the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Sablons, built in 1514 (Yes, that's 500 years ago)
Along with a name change -- they are now called “departmental”
and not “cantonal” -- the upcoming elections are giving the French a new way to
vote. The ballot will be ‘binôme’ – with tandems consisting of two names. Each
tandem will have a male and female candidate. This new rule to elect both a man
and a woman is a push for greater gender equality in the departments. In 2011,
less than a quarter of first round candidates were womenWith our house about to be repainted, Ches found a shop selling ceramic house numbers. Our current ones are Italian, bought in 2000 in Lucca and these ones have the Provencal lavender motif. If I can salvage the Italian ones, they can go on one wall and the new ones on the other.

At 7.00 we returned to the car for one of the more interesting exercises of the week. Ches had brought a change of clothes to wear for her birthday dinner and the only place to dress was in the car. Picture this, Ches with her jeans off and attempting to put on her slacks with two different cars consecutively parking beside her window while people held conversations through open windows. All's well that ends well and we arrived at the restaurant in style.

We were greeted by Alexandre and his wife (I'd emailed that it was Ches's birthday). There was only one other couple dining and we all had the degustation menu. No menu, just at the chefs discretion. As Alexandre explained to Cheryl later, food has to have a story and a good end result. This explains part of the "amuse-bouche" and the desert; red cabbage. In the former, pickled and in the second sweetened with sugar and frozen. His mother always sweetened red cabbage when no one else ever did. For Ches, a memory that my mother always added apple/sultanas to sweeten red cabbage.

We had a leisurely meal with lots of small portions of seafood and beef and a desert platter of 7 bite size pieces and a small bowl of original old style ice-cream .. that means lumpy and uneven texture. That's a good thing. Ches's was served with a sparkler.

We headed home at 10.30, negotiating numerous roundabouts in the dark and little help from Tom. Ches was afraid to nod off to sleep as she normally would.