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In Which I Flee From Cowboys & Backpackers
May 1, 2008 by Mike
Saintes Maries de la Mer
Route: Cap d'Agde - Stes Maries
Happy May Day, everyone. I rode past a high school named after Rosa Luxemburg today, which seemed appropriate. (Last year in Berlin, my good friend Phil showed me where she was assassinated.
Do the French proletariat rise as one on International Worker's Day in solidarity? Possibly.
But here in Stes-Maries, it's the accountants of the world who rise as one, push their brand-new, freshly-polished Harley-Davidsons out of the garage, and ride down to the coast to hang out, eat ice-cream and buy cowboy gear. Stes Maries is big on its cowboys.. or 'gardians', the men who work the huge herds of bulls here. Most Harley riders want to be cowboys when they grow up.
There's a couple of hundred of them in town, at least. Not all 'weekend bikers' -- three had come all the way from Switzerland, so they probably ride their bikes for at least a week at a time. Presumably, it's tax-deductable.
--
Passed Montpellier.
It's beautiful. I could live there. I stayed less than a couple of hours. *Oops*. (In my defence, this was the first time I cam e face-to-face with the InterRail hordes. 100s of them, bright-eyed and back-packed and all following each other up one vaulted boulevard and down the next stuccoed avenue because the Lonely Planet guidebook tells them to.
I ran away.
--
I'm in the Camargue -- low, marshy country at the delta of the Rhone river.
Palavas-les-Flots looked promising. There was a big party going on: laughing crowds flooding in one direction, big outdoor bars set up and people already dancing in the early afternoon and very very drunk. It reminded me of Gratangan -- this trip is starting to repeat itself at every turn.
But.. this wasn't getting drunk for the sake of it. It was a bull-fight.
This is very much bull-fighting country. Apparently they don't kill them here, just drive them wild (wild? I'd be bloody livid), hurt and humiliate them.
Nothing for me to see here, thank you very much. Move right along.
--
Aigues-Mortes is a tourist magnet, and deservedly so. Like Concarneau, it's a walled city. Unlike Concarneau, I had absolutely no idea it was coming: a lovely surprise. The walls are completely intact, and many hundreds of years old. More than enough time to get the word out -- there were tourists everywhere, too many to handle.
As a rule of thumb, I don't have much time for a place where you can't buy an ironing board, say, or a can of paint. Not because I'm looking for them, but because I figure the locals probably do, from time to time. And if daily, domestic shopping has been pushed out by the need to sell t-shirts, mugs and bookmarks with the town's name on, I think things have gone too far.
Again, I didn't stay.
Besides, I had good reason to press on. For once - a destination. My good friend Colin once found an Alex Chilton bootleg in the market at Stes-Maries. I ask you: what better reason do you need to stop in a place?
(I couldn't find the record stall. Perhaps the guy has a Harley-Davidson and took the day off to eat ice-cream and buy himself a stetson?)
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