16th September 2022

Today was our last day in the Camargue, we were due to drive west to Gruissan to meet with John and Carol for her birthday. Today we walked into Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer to do some final shopping, birthday gifts for Carol, and of course certain local ingredients for ourselves. We also bought some large French tomatoes to use later. One we added to our left-over Aubergine stew to build it out a bit.

We found a nice bar for a drink and sit down. Despite it being long past lunch time, the restaurants bars were still serving food and did not look inviting for casual drinkers. We chanced upon a very relaxing bar, not crowded with comfortable seats. A drinker’s bar, not a food bar. Thank heaven. The bar was called Bar Des Poetes, and had wall paintings and short verses French poems.

A started off with a Europ beer. I then asked the owner if they had Camargue beer. The jist of the reply was, the beer was too expensive, and with his markup nobody would buy it. The menu board listed Pastis Bleu. R attempted to ascertain what it was, explaining she liked Ricard. The owner regretted it was not made from Ricard, but another pastis. R had to try it cos “it’s such a lovely colour”.

We got talking to some Canadians who were sitting nearby, they seemed to come to the Camargue quite regularly. We also discovered we’d all been to Figueres, whereas we’d been surprised by the Dali museum there, that’s why they had gone there. They had completely missed the typewriter museum. Amazing. That museum was the reason we went there.

After the bar, we stopped at the shops to purchase the rice, some provisions (tomatoes, and also two bottles of Camargue beer) before walking home, but we soon heard news that made us cut our holiday short and head for home.

In the afternoon I went for a swim in the sea. It was quite calm now, with the wind coming in from the shore. While preparing supper I drank the two bottles of Camargue beer, one blonde, the other brown. They were fine, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy them.