The Crau–thwarted…

Our planned excursion today was to the crau, a rocky plain southwest of St. Remy which was in ancient times where the Durance and Rhone Rivers joined.  For centuries it was an important ecosystem in the area because of its diverse landscape of short herbaceous vegetation and served as an important sheep grazing habitat. Recently, scientists have been active in researching how to restore the ecosystem since the area has been significantly changed through land-use practices of the military, industrial and agricultural owners.  We rode through the pine forest of the Parc Regional Naturel des Alpilles, past Les Baux and through Maussane before we saw the red “BARRE” sign and its associated yellow “DEVIATION” arrow.  We followed the single arrow but when we came to a fork in the road our GPS always managed to return us to the red “BARRE” sign.  This detour provided us a lovely ride along tiny chemins (paths) too small for more than one car to traverse.  We were in the hilly countryside near Paradou and saw some stony ruins on a hillside not far from a thriving estate, Mas de Barquet.

Thwarted by our inability to get past the “BARRE” sign, we decided to ride through Mouries and eventually ended up at Mas de Gorgonniere, one of those places we’ve been before for olive oil that was advertised to Clay as liquid gold.  We each bought some of the liquid gold and had a simple lunch in Mouries at Cafe de l’Avenir.

Two more couples joined us late this afternoon–Mike and Susu Kearney had spent the week before in Istanbul and Jody and Julie Stagg had just left their horses (for the week) in the Carmargue following a tour of Provence on horseback. The eight of us had a tasty dinner at home and heard tales about our friends’ adventures.

Early night since we have a full day tomorrow.