Our plan for the final week was to spend it in Aix-en-Provence (a small city outside Marseille - now really part of Marseille) and to attend two Rugby World Cup quarter finals in Marseille on the final weekend. However after the results in Lyon, we pivoted and cancelled the rugby, instead adding a weekend in the Camargue region to the end of our stay in Aix.

But first we visited Arles to break up the long drive from Carcassone to Aix, stopping for lunch and to visit the new Gehry building just outside Arles called Luma Arles.

Spiral staircase, Luma Arles (I will confess I have taken some liberties with the colours to make it more dramatic)

Flamingoes, Parc Ornithologique du Pont de Gau, Camargue

One of the more sobering visits in our trip was to Camp des Milles, just outside Aix. Built in an old tile factory, Les Milles camp functioned as a French internment camp between 1939 and 1942. It was founded under the leadership of the French Third Republic to intern enemy aliens (mainly Germans) during the Phony War, the name applied derisively to the first several months of World War II during which little fighting occurred in western Europe.

In the Vichy era, Les Milles became a camp for foreign Jews awaiting emigration or, in most cases, deportation to German concentration camps. Between 1939 and 1942, 10,000 prisoners from 38 different nationalities were interned at Les Milles. 2,000 Jews interned at Les Milles were sent to Auschwitz.

The site has been turned into a hugely impressive, if very sobering museum and memorial.