Three Months in France: June 6 & 10 Life is a beach

The weather in this part of the world has definitely better than when we were living in the Loire valley. The temperatures are quite warm and getting hot, so some days you just have to give in and go to the beach. The first full day devoted to beaching was at Piémanson in the Camargue, which is the delta of the Rhone River in the Mediterranean. The Camargue is a nature reserve complete with wild white horses, grazing bulls, and enough birds, especially flamingoes, to keep a birder happy for a very long time. Piémanson is a nice beach with lots of sand, but it's little odd with an entire shanty town of camper trailers with leantos lining the entire beach. The water was not especially clean here either with lots of plastic flotsam. We did enjoy our time there and we also had the pleasure of helping out a German couple get their car unstuck from the sand. The loose sand was like driving in deep icy snow. Our four wheel drive car had no problems.

Plage Piémanson (43°20'58.7"N, 4°46'04.2"E)

The second beach we tried out on the 10th was also in the Camargue, but much more difficult to access with a very rough road (4WD came in handy again) and two very narrow gaps designed to limit car sizes that can access the site. Apparently there used to be a shanty town here too, but it was forcibly removed and these vehicular barriers installed. Below is a shot of Jim driving our Duster through one of the barriers. Both required pulling the side mirrors in. The water here was very clean and the beach was quite nice. There were numerous kite surfers around - at one point we counted 22 in the air at once.