Roman Provence

Tavel was a good place to explore Provence and we spent a fabulous day walking round the Pont du Gard, climbing to the view points above the bridge and walking along the river. The Mistral was blowing so there weren’t many other people around so we were lucky to avoid the crowds. A handful of hardy souls were braving the river, swimming or in canoes but it was pretty cold and the water was low so it didn’t look very inviting! It’s a great site though and they’ve made it into a really good visitors centre with nice paths and displays. The bridge and the Gard River are the real stars and amazing to think how they managed to build the bridge so long ago. We went on to Uzes and had a good walk round the old town and admired the castle.
Wednesday we went to Arles, another lovely old town with the amazing Roman arena and theatre. We took a small lunch at the cafe where Van Gogh used to take his morning coffee in the main square, which is on the site of the forum. It was a very ‘real’ place which didn’t seem to have been taken over by it touristic interests. The lunch at Van Gogh’s coffee place was very reasonable and the river frontage, although full of Rhone cruise boats visiting Arles, still felt a bit edgy and dock like. We went on to visit the Camargue, which was so beautiful, with lots of white horses, some bulls (though the taureau on the menu in Arles came from Spain) though I didn’t see any flamingos. We went to St Marie de la Mere for a last swim in the Med – as freezing as ever though it was a beautiful sandy beach. I persuaded John into the water so that he could say he’d swum in the sea once but he didn’t stay in for long and I don’t blame him!
We had to fight the sat nav the whole time as it was determined to take us back to Tavel via the autoroute when I wanted to go up the Rhone and see the viaduct south of Avignon for the TGV line. Naturally I won!