9. Church of St. Honorat, partially eleventh century.
THE ROAD TO AIX-EN-PROVENCE
leaves Arles from the Avenue Victor Hugo, and after winding a little for about twelve kilometres, with trees interfering with the view, goes due east in a straight line across the open plain called La Crau (pronounced ‘Crow’). It is a strange level waste of round stones, very uniform in size, which the torrents of innumerable ages have brought down from the Alps. The early peoples of Provence were mightily impressed with these monstrous pebbles, and Strabo has preserved the legend that Zeus rained them down on the earth to scatter the Ligurian tribesmen who often attacked the adventurous Phœnician traders and colonizers. The heat of the sun on the mass of stones, which has a depth averaging from 30 to 45 feet, produces the phenomenon of the mirage, and the conditions of wind and temperature are always inclined to be different to less exposed places. A clear sunrise over the mountains north-east of the Crau is a memorable sight. The desert of stones, broken here and there with lines of cypresses, is full of a strange shadowiness under the crimson-streaked sky as the eastern light grows in intensity, and one half expects to see a caravan of camels and the burnous of Arabia in place of the country cart of the French peasant.
The curiously isolated ridge called Les Alpines is prominent to the north wherever one goes between Nîmes and Salon.
Salon is a cheerful town at the very edge of the Crau. The main street has a bright and almost Parisian touch, with its numerous cafés having their tables under the shade of old plane-trees. There is a fourteenth-century château, and in the Church of St. Laurent, a Gothic building of the same period, is the tomb of Michel de Notre Dame, Catherine de Medici’s favourite astrologer. Another church is dedicated to St. Michael, and is a century earlier.
At the fork just beyond Salon the turning to the right is taken to Pélissanne, a village with tall cream-washed houses. In the centre one goes to the right and immediately afterwards to the left. Beyond this the road runs through pine-covered hills to St. Cannat, and finally through open country down a long descent into Aix-en-Provence.
SECTION XVII
AIX-EN-PROVENCE TO CANNES, 100 MILES
(160 KILOMETRES)
DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE
| Kil. | Miles. | ||
| Aix-en-Provence to St. Maximin | 36 | 22½ | |
| St. Maximin to Brignoles | 19 | 11¾ | |
| Brignoles to Le Luc | 24 | 15 | |
| Le Luc to Le Muy | 23 | 14¼ | |
| Le Muy to Fréjus | 16 | 10 | |
| Fréjus to St. Raphaël | By the | 3 | 1¾ |
| St. Raphaël to Agay | Corniche | 8 | 5 |
| Agay to Théoule | d’Or, | 20 | 12½ |
| Théoule to Cannes | 26¼ miles. | 11 | 7 |
| [Fréjus to Cannes through the Estérels | 36 | 22½] | |
NOTES FOR DRIVERS