The Rhtne River is the major river spilling into the northwestern Mediterranean. With its source at a gushing glacier in south-central Switzerland, the Rhtne flows west through Lake Geneva (which is no more than a deep mountain catch basin) and the lower Alps of France to Lyon and then turns due south. After Avignon, it opens out into a wide agricultural delta known as the Camargue before mingling with the Mediterranean's Gulf of Lion 505 miles from where it began.

The well-preserved Roman Arena at
Arles is still used for spectacles.

The French end of the Rhtne south of Lyon is best known for the region through which it flows: Provence. Already famous for a nexus of cities attracting turn-of-the-century artists and boasting colossal Roman ruins in fair states of preservation, Provence was given a latter century literary boost by Peter Mayle through his best-selling"A Year in Provence". He captured a loony side of the charming, and more remote, mountainous Vaucluse and Lubiron regions east of the river.

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A true river valley aficionado will still revel in the agriculture and industry of our modern-day world mixed in with the days-past vestiges of a culture making market, merry and mayhem along the waterway.

A pedal down the Rhtne starting in Lyon, France's second city, goes through lesser-known Vienne and Valence before hitting Orange and its Roman theater, summer theater festival site Avignon and the monumental Palais des Papes (and bridge), Arles with its still-in-use Roman arena, and the Camargue National Reserve, a protected wildlife area in the delta formed by the Rhtne's split into the Grand Rhtne and the Petit Rhtne.

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