Pam's Blog

We headed out of Ales on 9 September to visit two places: Le Pont du Gard and Nimes.

Le Pont (bridge) du Gard (over the Gardon River) is a Roman aqueduct built in about 50 AD. It took an estimated five years to build and it is a huge thing. Whenever I see these sorts of Roman structures it makes me wonder how they accomplished these feats 2000 years ago without any equipment. Lots and lots of sweat and ingenious engineering. They were quite sharp, as we learned on our trip to Bath in England a few years ago. Anyway, this thing spans the river and has three levels; the top on being the longest at 490 meters. The top has 47 arches. Second level is 242 meters long and is 19.5 meters high with 11 arches. And the botto, is the tallest at almost 22 meters with six arches spanning 142 meters across the river. We walked across and then Mom and I hiked up a trail to the panoramic view spot to take a few pics. In its day this aqueduct moved water at a rate of 400 litres per second. There was not a guided tour or admission so there was not a pamphlet with the history. I got all of the above info from the postcard I bought in the gift shop.

On to Nimes. The traffic in Nimes was murder. One of the major roads through town was shut down for some sort of bull event. Miraculously so,eone was pulling out of a parking spot and Dad pulled in. I am not sure how he actually got the car in the spot; but he did. The spot was right in front of Maison Cariee, another Roman ruin. We did not go in for the 22 minute 3D movie but we climbed the steps and looked it over. The columns were huge!

On our way to the Arenes (arena) we heard the sound of hoof beats on the pavement. We wandered over to the blocked off area and watched as; on one end of the street; a bull was let out of a trailer truck, chased by a three or four guys on horses, and then by a group of young men. We did not actually see what happened at the end of the street ( to the bull). The horses and riders came back to the truck to do it all over again. The bull did not come back.

The arena is another testament to the Roman engineers. It looks like the coliseum in Rome but is smaller. It appears to by still used today. About half ( the lower half) has been replaced with wooden bleachers (really rickety). The place is big … not U of M The Big House big, but big. We climbed to the top and could see all around the city. The sun and wind were magnifique. If you wanted to, you could step right off the top and tumble to your death. One young couple walked the whole distance around the top. It gave me tingles down my spine just to watch them … and gave me shivers just to think and type that description!!

On our way back to Ales we stopped at a tiny walled town on top of a hill called Lussan. This is not a mountainous area so building a walled town on top of this hill was probably a good idea in medieval times. There is still a good bit of the wall left and we walked around the village in short order. There is one way in and that, too, was probably a good security move in the before time.

We put 12,500 steps on the ped today and had a to die for chocolate mousse for dessert!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.