The Camargue: Pont de Gau, the Vaccarès and Saintes-Maries

Required Activities

• Walk the seven kilometres of path across the 60 hectares of Pont de Gau towards sunset, when the flamingos, herons and egrets come in close, and find the wildlife care centre that takes in around 350 injured birds a year — the same place that took in starving flamingos when 90 per cent of the Camargue lagoons froze over in February 2012

• Walk or cycle east out of Saintes-Maries along the digue à la mer, between the étangs de la Dame, du Tampan and de Galabert inside the national nature reserve, as far as the Gacholle lighthouse — a plain 18 m masonry tower put up in 1882 to get boats safely into the Beauduc anchorage — counting the flamingo flocks on either side of the dyke as you go

• Drive the roads that run right round the Étang de Vaccarès — 12 km long and nowhere more than two metres deep — and stop where the manades are out, the loose herds of white horses and black bulls that gave the lagoon its name: vaccarès means the place where the cows graze

• Drive the D570 through the delta from Arles to Saintes-Maries and go into the fortified church: down to the crypt where the travellers dress and venerate Sara the Black, then up to the high chapel, a keep in its own right with a wall-walk round its base and a crenellated platform on top, built to hold the relics and the villagers when the Saracens came. Van Gogh spent five days here in June 1888 painting the boats on this beach