Ken Ritley

I’ve written about cable ferries before, such as the cable ferry on the Rhine.

My hobby is very dangerous in and of itself, visiting to the most secluded regions of France – regions so remote and backwards that it is rumored, the local inhabitants themselves (after centuries of in-breeding) often have no names.

The Gendarmarie cannot stop you – but if you ask their advice they caution strongly against it, pointing you back to the nearest McDonald’s restaurant.

But I like to throw caution to the wind, and despite the obvious dangers I set out to explore the delta where the Rhone River meets the Mediterranean Sea. Even today I’m one of the few Americans to have ever seen where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico – that place, too, is better avoided by most tourists.

When driving to reach the secluded southern French village of Sainte-Marie-sur-la-Mer, the first thing you run across is a river and this sign:

Then next thing that happens: you step out of your vehicle and – suddenly! frightfully! just as you open your car door!  – you are viciously attacked by two immense and deadly guard dogs:

Sharp fangs. Massive jaws to crush their prey. A growl that could scare Satan himself. It’s doubtful that these hounds of hell would allow many tourists to live.

If these vicious attack dogs do in fact let you live – and in my case thankfully they did – then you’ll come to realize that the road has ended, and there is no bridge to the other side. The river you see here is the Le Petit Rhone, an offshoot of a huge French river that transports the glacial water from Switzerland down through France and into the Mediterranean Sea.

Hmmmmm, you think to yourself. I am way over here. I want to be way over there.

That’s not just one but two “way overs.”

Hmmmmm, you think some more. Does my car float? No.

So you think some more. Hmmmmm. (That’s the sound of you thinking.)

But there is in fact a ferry, as you can see on the left side of the above snap. And slowly . . . in a matter of minutes . . . it dawns on you: Hey, I bet that ferry is no coincidence! Someone must have put that way over here so that I could travel way over there. My problem of two “way overs” is solved!

I had to wait for over an hour (it was lunch time, and the French are very serious about their lunches, very carefully timing them to include finishing the glass of wine and smoking a cigarette), but eventually the ferry was loaded up and started on its way over:

And here’s a snap just as it reached the shore:

The difference between this ferry and the one in the link I posted: that ferry is attached to a steel cable, and the steel cable provides the locomotive force that pulls the ferry across the Rhine. In this case there is also a steel cable as you can see in the snap above, but the ferry has a motor and the cable is used to guide the ferry.

How did the story end?

I left the vicious hounds of hell (that interestingly liked having their ears scratched), got into my car, drove onto the ferry, crossed the river, and headed towards my fate in Sainte-Marie-de-la-Mer, a place so remote that the locals (after centuries of in-breeding) have no names and do not tolerate tourists lightly.

Vincent van Gough, that is, because this is the site, Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole,   in the tiny southern French commune of St. Remy de Provence where Vincent stayed in a hospital and painted:

Here is a nice sign:

Vincent van Gough put the tiny French commune of St. Remy de Provence on the map, since this is where he stayed in a hospital.  Just a stone’s throw from that hospital (literally, across the street!) is a pretty impressive site of ancient ruins, called Site Archéologique de Glanum. There are many more ruins than shown here – these are just the most impressive ones next to the parking lot:

It’s a good life in the south of France.

Whereas Swiss pidgeons in the middle of winter are worrying about food and avoiding freezing to death, these Provential pidgeons are using the medieval water fountain in Arles to take a bath and keep their feathers clean:

This snap really appeals to me.

It’s a juxtaposition of protection in the southern French village of Arles. In the foreground, modern protection against Covid; in the background, medieval protection against lawless threats. And on the side, that column you see is the sensor for a bollard, a modern traffic barricade that helps keep the inner city streets free from the threat of terrorists using their vehicles as weapons.

All three things serving a very similar purpose, keeping out something that is unwanted.

The Camargue region in southern France (essentially the swampy delta where the Rhone River empties into the Mediterranean Sea) is famous for its white horses, which many scientists actually think are one of the oldest breeds of horses in the world.

I took this snap down a deserted road in the Camargue, just outside of Sainte-Marie-de-Mer in the south of France

As artistic a snap as I thought I could take of what I think (but am not entirely sure) is a cement factory just outside of the southern French village of Beaucaire,

There are many good things about France that trace their origin back to Napolean – and the zillions of kilometers of streets in the south of France, lined by plane trees carefully planted to give shade to army troops, is one of them.

Here is as artistic a snap as I thought I could take of a street in the southern French village of Beaucaire, lined with plane trees:

If you think they are all leaning to the right, you’d be right. This part of France lives under the so-called Mistral wind, a wind of up to nearly 75  km/hr that forces trees to grow tilted. I visited in the winter, and there were numerous times I had to stop the Euro Cruiser, my minivan, because the wind gusts were too strong to safely drive.

Continuing the series, here is a snap from the Southern French village of Agde,

Continuing the series, what makes Agde so interesting for me is that many buildings have been built with a dark stone – and you just don’t see that in other French villages.

Here’s a pretty impressive snap of a downtown square in the southern French city of Arles, taken at around noon time – and as you can see, what should be a bustling, hectic square filled with people stands essentially empty: