Salt, reed and grazing pasture in southern France
One place sits here, and it moves the least: narrow spread weeks reserved through a San Diego travel office
One place carries this mark. A six night week in the Camargue, from $1,340 per person, two sharing a double room, in April, May, September or October. Narrow means the two printed versions of that week sit close together: the poor one costs you light, bird numbers and comfort in the wind, and leaves the ground, the guide and the nights intact.
Reserve one of these weeksSend the form whenever it suits: it never shuts. Someone here replies inside one working day, and no charge arises at this end.
Why one is the shortest distance
Every place on this site carries a number from one to four, and the number describes distance, not luck. One is the shortest distance between the two printed versions of a week. It is given where the fixed parts of the trip carry most of the value: the ground itself, the walking, the buildings, the food, the guide's knowledge of where to go when the first plan is no good. It is not given where a single event, a single animal or a single kind of light is the reason people go. The office sets the number when the week is written and does not move it to suit a slow month. If a place changes, because an operator changes what the week contains, the number is reset and the page says so.
Reading a narrow week before you commit
Read the worst half first. On a narrow week it should describe a duller version of the same days, not a different set of them: the same tracks in worse light, the same rooms in worse weather, an afternoon lost to wind. If the worst half describes something you would not have bought at all, the mark is wrong and the office wants to hear about it. Then check what the figure holds, because the fixed parts are what you are actually paying for at this level. Then check the months. A narrow week is narrow because they are sold in the shoulder season, when the ground is at its most reliable and the crowds are thin, and moving your dates outside those months moves the mark as well.
Ground that holds when the sky does not
Narrow ground is flat, worked and walkable. In the one place that carries this mark it is delta country: shallow brackish water in wide basins, banked earth tracks two metres above it, reed and glasswort, rice on the fresher side and salt pans on the salt side, with white mounds of harvested salt standing at the western end. Horses and black cattle graze the enclosures. None of that is weather dependent. The basins hold water whether the sky is blue or grey, the tracks stay dry, the salt mounds stand all year, and the villages at the edge of the marsh keep their kitchens open in wind. That is why the two versions of the week stay close: most of what you came to stand in front of is still there.
1 place sit here
Asked before anybody commits
Does a narrow mark mean good weather is likely?
No. It means the two printed versions of the week are close together, nothing more. The office keeps no record of how often a week goes one way or the other and will not put a percentage on this page, because it would be invented. If somebody quotes you odds on a season, ask where that figure came from.
Only one place carries this mark. Will there be more?
Probably, but the office will not add a place to this level to fill it out. The mark is set by what the week is made of, and most of the ground worth six or seven nights in Europe has a wider spread than this. When a second narrow week is written it will appear here with the same two halves as everything else.
Will the office move me to a narrow week if I ask?
It will tell you which weeks carry the mark and what each of them is made of, and it will not push you towards one. It also refuses one thing outright: it will not tell you that a wider place is going to be fine this year. Nobody knows that. Choosing the level is your decision, and both halves of every page are there so you can make it.
Finish the sentence and a week gets reserved
Whatever the hour, what you send lands here and is read by a person, who replies inside one working day. Sending it binds you to nothing, and no sum is ever taken at this end.