We moved on from Mausanne-les-Alpilles to Florac. Francine found a pleasant sounding campsite, Camping le Vagabond, on the outskirts of Florac and beside Le Tarnon river, which flows on into the Tarn. We arrived on Sunday 22nd June.
Camping le Vagabond is a small campsite of about 30 pitches and lacks a specific facility for dealing with motorhomes – no tailor-made motor van service area. The owners, though, do their very best to make up for that shortfall by, for example, manually emptying waste water tanks and running long hoses to fill fresh water tanks. After avoiding a few low-hanging tree limbs, we got Frodo settled. The ground slopes down a little towards Le Tarnon so levelling ramps are essential.
A storm blew in on Sunday late afternoon. The storm was accompanied by hail stones the size of marbles. We sheltered in Frodo with a little trepidation, hoping that the hail stones did not damage his roof or roof vents. In years gone by, we have seen caravans and cars dented by large French hail stones, looking as if they’d been hit by a ball-peen hammer. One poor chap had had his caravan’s roof vents smashed by hail stones, the vents being relatively flimsy plastic. We kept our fingers crossed that the hail got no larger’. Repairing hail stone damage in France is something of a specialist industry.
We had originally intended to stay for just two nights but Florac – spot the pattern here – was pretty much closed on Monday so we extended our stay to three nights so Francine could see Florac open on Tuesday.
After the hail storm, days two and three at Florac were sunny and hot, with the mercury hitting the high 30s°C. The river Tarnon beside the campsite had a small beach, the bottom of the river being a pleasantly fine gravel, though strewn with some rounded rocks; nothing painful or unpleasant – I do dislike muddy river bottoms. The water was quite cold and, once over the initial shock, bathing in it to cool down in the later afternoon was very refreshing. It had been a long time since we’d indulged in river bathing.
Zooming about over the river were dozens of Small Pincertail (Onychogomphus forcipatus) dragonflies, some of which were prone to using our heads as perches as we sat in the middle of the water. This species likes to perch on the rocks beside the river so maybe that’s what they took our heads for, especially mine which was covered in a rock-coloured Buff..
Butterflies were taking advantage of the salts in the sandy beach beside the river, too. There was quite an aggregation of Essex Skippers (Thymelicus lineola), which seems like a slightly silly common name when observing them in the south of France. Maybe the American name of European Skipper would be more appropriate in this context.
My star here, initially spotted by eagle-eyed Francine, was undoubtedly a fully grown Conehead Mantis (Empusa pennata) which did its best to pose favourably. We have seen this species before but this was in prime position. Try studying the face, it looks completely other worldly. What a magnificent creation.
We did have what turned out to be an educational evening wander down to the river. Unusually, hitherto we have been through this trip without hearing the haunting pings of Scops Owls (Otus scops). Down at the river we heard what seemed like an almost constant chorus of them. I fired up the Merlin app which does a great job of recognizing birds by sound but it came up with nothing. Hmmm? Merlin had always been reliable in the past. Eventually the penny dropped. What we were hearing were Midwife Toads (Alytes obstetricans) which are said to be the only thing that you can confuse with a Scops Owl, sound-wise. We were actually surrounded by them and their irregular calls. There were a couple of clues. The call is more of a “beep” than is the more metallic “ting” of a Scops Owl and the calls are more scattered whereas the Scops Owl repeats at about 3 second intervals. Education complete.
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