Tarascon to Pont du Gard and return: a wonderful day

November 1, 2009

Weather: sunny and warm

Breakfast was good, with cheeses, cold meat and homemade jams, along with croissants, baguettes and strong Arabica coffee. Besides the French couple we had met the previous evening, there was a group of Swedish travelers around the table. As soon as we opened our mouths, everyone automatically started speaking English with us, and very good English too. We were impressed with the 13 year old son of one Swedish couple, who spoke Swedish, French, good English, and he was learning German in school. It's quite amazing—we feel totally undereducated. Even though we live in Canada--a country with two official languages--our province of British Columbia is a long way from French-speaking Quebec and essentially a sea of English.

The table set for breakfast at the Hotel de Provence.

The ride to the Pont du Gard was along gently rolling small rural roads, and we went past many fields of salad greens (including frisée like we had for dinner last night). There were also fields of corn stubble, with old cars parked near one, and gleaners picking up leftovers from the ground. This was the first day we had cycled without weight on the bikes, and it felt like we were flying along. We were somewhat mystified while passing through small villages to see many people in the cemeteries, tidying the graves and decorating them with pots of chrysanthemums. We found out later that November 1 is La Toussaint (All Saints Day) in France, when it is customary to honour the lives of deceased relatives and all the saints by placing flowers on the graves. Perhaps because of the holiday, there was very little traffic.

We passed fields of frisee and other greens as well as corn that had already been harvested.

Our route took us through several small villages in the rolling countryside between the Rhone and the Gard. (This one is Theziers.)

The village of Remoulins was just on the other side of the Gard river from the Pont du Gard, and we thought we might come back here for lunch after visiting the famous aqueduct. We crossed the bridge and rode another 2 km or so along the west bank of the river past huge parking lots that were quite empty today. In the summer they would be full of buses and cars. Suddenly, there it was in front of us, the Pont du Gard, an incredible huge structure that really has to be seen to be believed. Wikipedia describes it succinctly:

“It is part of the Nîmes aqueduct, a 50 km-long structure built by the Romans to carry water from a spring at Uzès to the Roman colony of Nimes. Because the terrain between the two points is hilly, the aqueduct– built mostly underground– took a long, winding route that crossed the gorge of the Gardon, requiring the construction of an aqueduct bridge. Built in the 1st century AD, the Pont du Gard is the highest of all Roman aqueduct bridges and is the best preserved after the Aqueduct of Segovia. It was added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites in 1985 because of its historical importance.”

We approached Pont du Gard from the south side, and were very impressed.

The weather was perfect and the crowds were somewhere else as we spent a lot of time on and around the fascinating structure.

It seemed really surprising that the aqueduct had remained largely intact through all those centuries when people had so often been knocking things down.

After riding back and forth across the bridge a few times and taking many photos, we ate lunch on a cafe terrace in full view of the Pont. Lunch took a long time since the waiter lost our order. We didn't mind--we couldn't think of a better place to wait for our food. Here we were in November, wearing shorts and sitting outside in front of one of the wonders of the world with hardly any other tourists to obstruct our view. We felt incredibly lucky!

The view from our table at lunch. We were in no hurry to finish.

After our protracted lunch, we tore ourselves away from the Pont du Gard and cycled back to Tarascon pretty much the way we had come. The sky was clouding up somewhat by now, with sun poking through the clouds, and the light was quite magical. We were riding past a stubbly field when a huge flock of crows suddenly lifted off the ground and soared into the air. Just then a TGV train whizzed by in the distance, and the juxtaposition of the field, the clouds, the birds and the train were like a painting—almost a Van Gogh landscape in this countryside near Arles where he actually painted. Unfortunately it all happened too fast to get a photo.

We finished off a terrific day with another good dinner at Restaurant le Theatre.

(An aside from the future. In 2009, we thought the Pont du Gard was so deserted because of the Toussaint holiday. In 2011 we went back to the Pont, this time cycling from Uzès, the source of the water carried by the aqueduct. It happened to be November 2, the day after Toussaint and this time the Pont du Gard was really deserted. The restaurants were closed, and there couldn't have been more than 20 other tourists. Of course the day was cool and rain threatened, but still, we were quite surprised and realized that in 2009, it had actually been busier than normal for the time of year because of the holiday.)

Two years later, almost to the day, in 2011 we re-visited Pont du Gard on a cloudy day and got to share this remarkable structure with even fewer people. We also took the time to visit the museum on the north approach and learned a lot about the way it was built.

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 499 km (310 miles)

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