Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 40 Saint-Gilles - Aigues-Mortes

A man must invest himself near at hand and in common things, and be content with a steady and moderate return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheerful heart and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth.

- John Burroughs, Exhilarations of the road (1923)

I'm going to keep calling this road the Via Domitia. The GR 653D / Via Domitia trail ends in Arles; but the original Via Domitia road was built to connect Rome with Spain, and after Arles it passed through Beziers and Narbonne. It’s not known exactly what route the road took around modern-day Montpellier, but I doubt would have come through the marshlands of the  Camargue, long before the construction of today's drainage  canals. The route taken by the Romans is more likely to have been approximately the route taken by the Via Tolosana today, through Vauvert, Lunel and Gallargues-le-Monteaux; but I walked that way last time, in 2017, and I want to do everything differently this time. So the Camargue it is! 

The hospitalier volunteering in Saint-Gilles, Marc, accompanied me out of the town and onto the GR 42 trail, as far as the site of a spring associated with the legend of Saint Gilles. Here we said our goodbyes and I carried on alone on a dirt road through fields, vineyards, and the pastures of the famous white horses of the Camargue. 

About an hour into the walk I joined the Canal du Rhône à Sète, and I never left it again, all day. Not even when the GR 42 took a turn through the fields; I continued straight along the canal, on the former towpath, now a cycling track, part of EuroVelo route 8, Vélo Méditerranée, which connects Cadice, Spain with Athens, Greece and continues onto the island of Cyprus: a total distance of almost 5400 km! 

Well if all of it is this boring, that's one route I would not want to do! Though it makes sense on a bicycle, flashing through the landscape at high speed (compared to walking). There were lots of cyclists out there today, though I don't think any of them were planning on travelling all 5400 kilometres! One of them stopped to warn me of a danger ahead, which at first I didn't grasp: he said he had once seen a bull on the upcoming stretch of the path. Only once, though, he said. Then, if I understood correctly, he said he would come back and tell me if he saw any bulls. Well he didn't come back, and lots of cyclists passed by in the other direction, and there were no bulls on the path; still, the warning added a bit of excitement to an otherwise dull stretch of canal path! For the rest, the only variation in the monotony of the canal was seeing a sign ahead - wondering what it said - reading it - leaving it behind. Seeing a bridge ahead - getting closer - going under it - coming out the other side. Seeing a snail on the path. Oh, and once I saved a drowning dragonfly that had fallen into the canal and couldn't get out. I let it climb onto my walking pole, and deposited it on the grass. I was not so kind to the mosquitos! Though it's November, it's still warm enough that there are mosquitos around. I regretted having given my mosquito head net to Mariella when she went home, thinking it would be useless. I sprayed myself with Atlantick, a natural tick repellent made from eucalyptus oil which I figured would repel mosquitos, too. It did - but I forgot to remove my water bottles from my front pockets before spraying. So the first time I took a drink, I got a mouthful of eucalyptus-flavoured water, and tingly lips! Luckily, it's non-toxic.

A sign!

A snail!

Passing under a bridge!

The 98-kilometre-long Canal du Rhône à Sete connects the Rhône River in Beaucaire with the Étang de Thau in Sète, through which it is connected to the Canal du Midi. The idea of building the canal was first raised during the reign of Henri IV, though the project was implemented under Napoleon I, by connecting three older canals, for the purpose of shipping salt: taxes on salt were particularly profitable for the nation. Today the canal is used primarily for leisure purposes, by pleasure boats on the water and bicycles on the tow path. On either side are marshes in which a variety of water fowl may be seen, and heard, including great blue herons, egrets, marsh hens, cormorants, birds of prey and big white geese, the size of Canada Geese but all white. I haven't seen any flamingoes - yet! In the fields in between the marshes are the classic black cattle and white horses associated with the Camargue. 

The term Camargue refers to the region south of Arles between the eastern arm of the Rhône, referred to as the Grand Rhône, and the western arm, the Petit Rhône. The area is, logically enough, located in the département called Bouches-du-Rhône: the mouths of the Rhône. I crossed the Petite Rhône yesterday, and so I am actually walking across what is known as the Petite Camargue, an expanse of marshy plain located just to the west of the Petite Rhône in the département of Gard. When I crossed the Petite Rhône yesterday, I walked not only into the département of Gard, but into a whole new region of France: Occitanie. The region of Provence-Alps-Côte d'Azur is behind me!

Source: Wikipedia 

Geography lesson over; back to the trail. Eventually, after a very long time on the canal path, a tower came into view, far off in the distance. Eventually, it appeared closer. A couple of twists and U-turns in the trail allowed me to cross the canal on a road bridge, backtrack a little way up the canal I had just spent all day walking down, and get onto the tow path of another, smaller canal, which took me all the way into Aigues-Mortes. I stopped at the Super-U supermarket to buy dinner supplies, as it was right on the canal path, and I figured it would have a bigger selection than the small Vival supermarket in the town centre. By the way, for future walkers, there are a couple of villages just off the canal path along the way, with cafés, though I had picnic supplies with me, so I didn't add any extra metres of walking to check whether the cafés were actually open! 

After walking thirty kilometres, I was very happy to walk through the Gardette gate in the city walls and locate my chambre d'hôtes in the old town centre. After showering and washing out a few things I went for a walk around the town at dusk. The chief attraction in Aigues-Mortes is the town's well-preserved medieval walls, completed around the year 1300 under Philip III the Bold. Within these extraordinary walls is a fairly ordinary southern French town, with the addition of a generous dose of souvenir shops, hotels and restaurants catering to the tourists attracted by the picturesque sight of the walled city standing amid the marshes and salt flats. The name of the town comes from the Latin Aquae Mortuae, meaning dead or stagnant waters, and the area has been producing salt since Neolithic times. P

Chambre d'hôtes Le dit vin secret is in the home of an artist, whose paintings are everywhere. As soon as I step out of my room I find myself on a glass floor with a view straight through to the common room/breakfast room downstairs. But after a thirty-kilometre day, I don't think I'll be stepping out of my room again before tomorrow morning! 🥱

Saint-Gilles - Aigues-Mortes 30 km

Tomorrow: the sea!

Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 39 Arles - Saint-Gilles

Travelling in the knowledge that you have a point of return gives you the will to keep moving away.

- Raynor Winn, The Salt Path (2018)

A day of rather dull landscapes, but amazing skies! And inhabitants of the skies. All the way along the trail I saw, and heard, unfamiliar birds... and I wasn't even able to use the Merlin app to identify them, as there was no Internet reception for most of the way! I later managed to identify two of them: the common crane (very large, grey like a heron but flies with its neck straight, not bent; sounds like a seagull) and the water rail (I bird I didn't actually see, but heard a lot: it squeals like a pig! Really!!)

The Rhône seen from Arles

Wherever I go, I find myself in a Van Gogh painting

Crossing the Rhône

Looking back at Arles over the Rhône 

There are two paths from Arles to Saint-Gilles: the official GR route, corresponding to the first stage of the GR 653 / Voie d'Arles, better known outside France as the Via Tolosana; and an alternative route beside the canal known as the Petite Rhône. Last time I walked this stage, I followed the canal, and it was extremely monotonous, so this time I tried the other route, even though Anne and Marie-Hèlene, two pilgrims I met in Saint-Gilles on that occasion, had told me it was equally boring, and entirely on paved roads.

The road out of Arles on the other side of the bridge, Route du Camargue, was quite busy just after eight in the morning, with people going to work and school, and there was a short stretch with no sidewalks, a ditch on one side and a row of maple trees on the other. Once out of Arles, though, the trail followed small paved roads through the fields and marshes, with very little traffic. 

From the rice paddies of Vercelli to the rice paddies of the Camargue - in 40 days! 😅

When I was tired of seeing only fields, and puddles, on either side of the road, I took a little detour into the centre of the village of Saliers and stopped in at the local bistrot/épicerie for a hot chocolate. The joky bartender said that would be €2.80 for the hot chocolate and €50 for the wifi. When another customer came in and the bartender came out with another similar line, the customer turned to me and said, What's wrong with this guy? - He's crazy, I replied, happy to be "in" on a joke in French! 😜

The last few kilometres into Saint-Gilles were fairly non-descript, other than the fact that the balisage, the waymarkers for the GR trail, sent me off on a tangent when the centre of Saint-Gilles was already visible, straight ahead down the main road. I should've ignored the signs and just kept walking along the main road, because after taking me on a tour of the industrial district and mini-storage facilities of Saint-Gilles, the GR trail markings brought me back to the road anyway. 🙄 I remembered that when I first walked this trail nine years ago, the entry into the town was different; and when I arrived at the pilgrim hostel, the hospitalier on duty confirmed that the route had changed. I guess I got distracted by the cutout pilgrim figure, which convinced me to go down the trail rather than walk on the road! 

The new route does, however, have the merit of bringing you into town across a scenic bridge over the Canal du Rhône à Sète, and taking you past a string of cafés and shops that I hadn't even realised were there, the last time I came. And it is marked with symbols of the Chemin de Compostelle everywhere - on the pavement, on the signs, even on the planters. For this is the first stage on the Voie d'Arles, or Via Tolosana: the least commonly walked of the four major pilgrimage routes across France converging on Saint-Jean-Pied-du-Port, but still a better-known route than the Via Domitia!

And in fact tonight I am staying at a proper pilgrim hostel - the same one as I stayed at nine years ago - and I have my own personal hospitalier, seeing as no-one else is staying here! I may well be the only pilgrim that Marc sees during his one-week shift, this late in the year. The hostel closes on November 15th, so I hope he will have some work to do shutting up for the season, to keep him busy if no other pilgrims stop by! 😅

The town of Saint-Gilles emerged in the eleventh century around the Benedictine monastery founded by Saint Gilles. According to the legend promoted by the monks of the monastery, Saint Gilles was Aegidus, an illustrious Greek of the seventh century who became so well-known and sought-after for his miracles that he preferred to flee his native land and take refuge in a hermitage by the Rhône. While he was searching for the spot, a deer fleeing the royal hunt took refuge in the saint's arms. When the king discovered that one of his arrows had struck and wounded the holy man  instead of the deer, he offered him the land on which to build his monastery, as compensation. 

That may not sound like a lot to build a sainthood on, but the legend of Saint Gilles became so popular that the abbey church of Saint-Gilles was the fourth most important site of pilgrimage in the medieval world, after Jerusalem, Santiago and Rome. The current church was constructed towards the end of the twelfth century, but if the interior looks newer than that, that's because it was severely damaged during the French Wars of Religion, a series of civil wars between French Catholics and Protestants from 1562 to 1598, when the Huguenots barricaded themselves inside the church; and again in 1794, following the Revolution. 

The eleventh-century crypt below the church is traditionally a site of pilgrimage for women wishing to bear children. But when I descended the stairs to the crypt, it was the children themselves who were there: a small group of children stood singing before the saint's tomb.

My contemplation in the crypt of the church was rudely interrupted by my stomach reminding me that a hot chocolate is not normally considered lunch. I surfaced into the material world and made a quick trip to the supermarket around the corner for yogurt and bananas, just enough to tide me over until dinner time, when I cooked the rest of my spaghetti with zucchini and egg for Marc and I. We didn't have any Parmesan, but I added Comte cheese instead: a French version of the recipe! It tasted just fine!

Arles - Saint-Gilles 22.5 km