To Arles

October 11, 2024

Today’s ride is as easy as it gets: flat the entire way, until there’s a slight climb up into the city at the end when we reach Arles. The weather is perfect - warm, comfortable, lightly breezy. And the route I’ve found for us seems like it would be hard to improve on - we ride quiet lanes and bike paths the entire way, including a couple of miles along the bank of the Rhone at the end leading into the city. We leave just after 10 and arrive in Arles exactly at 12:30, as I predicted. We even made a bet on it - Rachael said she’d do the laundry if we made it by 12:30, hoping to encourage me to keep up a good pace.

There’s only one small bit of drama to the ride when we come upon what looks like a traffic jam on the narrow single track farming road we’re on. Surprising, because we’ve hardly seen a car on this quiet road. I wonder at first if there’s been an accident, but as we get closer we see what’s going on. Coming our way is a queue of four passenger cars; and they’re coming very slowly because they’re all backing up, driving carefully so they don’t veer off into a ditch. And they keep backing up until they finally come to a junction with another small road, and one by one they find their spot on rhe shoulder to pull off. And beyond them coming our way is a giant HGV, patiently waiting for the cars to get out of his way so he can get on with his job. I wonder how far those poor drivers had to back up? We just saw it as the situation was clearing, but it could have been quite a distance.

A last look back at the Montagnette, the small range at the mouth of the Durance.

Sound track: Tanya, by Cal Tjader

We’re in Arles by 12:30, but it takes us at least another ten minutes or more to make it the final five or six blocks to Jardin des Arts, the restaurant where we’ve booked a table for one o’clock. This part of Arles near the cathedral is a real maze and there’s some frustration and some wrong navigation choices made along the way before we finally find it.

It’s worth finding though. We’re seated in an impressively atmospheric space, in a structure our waiter tells us was built in the 12th century. It’s a colorful, artistic place with modern art works lining its walls. And best of all, the meal itself is excellent.

Our room is ready when we arrive the Hotel de l’Amphitheatre, just a few blocks beyond the restaurant. Bikes are ushered inside and directed to the atrium; when I look up at the blue sky I wonder what the chances are the bikes will stay dry for our three night stay here. Afterwards we’re shown to our room on the first floor - a somewhat decent sized space that has a minibar and hot water pot so we can have our own breakfasts and coffee in the room.

The view from our room. Even though we’re only two blocks from the arena it’s very quiet here.

Arles is a significant place, one we’ve been to twice before - once 27 years ago on our way from Nice to Lisbon, and then just two years ago at nearly this same time of year on the way to Nice and the end of that year’s nine month tour. We came to Arles a day early on a last minute decision made partly to avoid some expected foul weather and partly so we could meet up with the Grampies who coincidentally were in town also. And in a really odd coincidence, we could probably have met up with them again this time too because they also passed through Arles just two days ago, moving south and west at a much faster clip than we are. They probably passed within fifteen miles of us when we were biking south from Pernes.

It’s a beautiful day and there are still some good daylight hours left, so not long after we’ve settled in Rachael leaves for a walk along the canal south of town, following the Via Rhona.

Along the Canal from Arles to Bouc. Bouc is a small port town on the Mediterranean, just west of Marseilles. Look again at the photo though - there’s a second canal out of sight on the left, separated by a slender berm: the Viguierat Canal. This one’s smaller, maybe a simple irrigation canal, and begins north near Saint-Rémy.

On the Via Roma, an exceptional bit of bike infrastructure that must be about the most family-friendly long distance bike route in France.

So much depends on a red canoe, as William Carlos Williams might have said of this scene.

While Rachael walks the waterways I stay close to home, exploring the streets and monuments near the hotel. Arles is a fantastic place to just take your time and wander, but besides the colorful, charismatic streets I make it to the Hotel de Ville, the cathedral, and the cloister. I’m especially drawn to the cloister and its fantastic carved columns and capitols - and I’m lucky to see it when I do, because there are only two or three other folks sharing the space with me as it’s so late in the day. At the end of my visit I’m walking on the roof of the cloister admiring the views of the cathedral and watching a gull when the attendant approaches me and kindly asks if I’ve enjoyed my visit. It’s her gentle way of letting me know they’re closing and I need to leave.

Later, I’ll go back and reread the journal from just two years ago and become shocked anew at just how terrible both of our memories have gotten in recent years. It’s sobering to see photographs taken then of structures it felt like I was seeing for the first time today. What’s really depressing though is to see the photograph of our hotel: the Hotel de l’Amphitheatre again. We stayed at the same hotel, and I worried about rain on the bikes in the uncovered atrium that time too. I had no idea.

The Place de la Republique: the square surrounded by the Hotel de Ville, the Cathedral, and the Saint-Trophime Cloister.

The Place de la Republique: lions, pigeons, and the obelisk.

The cathedral. Interesting that the poor souls on the right are all chained together.

The interior of the cathedral impressed me for its scale and severity. The aisles are so high and slender.

Inside the Cloister of St. Trophime. Built in the 11th and 12th centuries, the cloister was an important pilgrimage site and the starting point for one of the routes to Santiago.

Inside the Cloister of St. Trophime. The cloister and associated church house some of the most important Romanesque sculptures in the world.

The view from the roof of the cloister. I took almost this exact photo two years ago.

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Today's ride: 22 miles (35 km)
Total: 4,153 miles (6,684 km)

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