November 3, 2011
Around Uzes: no cycling
WEATHER: cloudy, windy, showers
We both awoke on and off during the night to constant flashes of lightning illuminating our grotto. We couldn't believe how long the storm was lasting. At home thunderstorms usually last for less than an hour. Here it was all night long, with heavy rain, occasional loud thunder claps and one flash of lightning after another. Around 7:00 at first light, the rain had stopped, but the wind was whistling through the trees and the heavy black clouds were threatening. We abandoned our plans for a loop ride and decided to stay close to shelter and explore Uzès on foot today.
While enjoying English Breakfast tea at a nearby salon de thé, we happened to spy the local newspaper with its front-page headline warning of a déluge (heavy rain) and inondation (flooding) expected near the town of Sommières, our destination for tomorrow! There was a photo as well, showing an almost flooded bridge with rain pelting down. In addition, that area was marked with a red (the strongest) warning on the weather forecast, which meant 'Caution! Only travel if necessary!' We were quite worried, and decided to keep our options open for tomorrow. However we really did not want to stay an extra day in Uzès.
For the moment it wasn't raining, so after our tea break we made our way to the walking path down into the L'Eure Valley and the source of the Eure river which in Roman times had fed the aqueduct leading to the Pont du Gard and Nîmes. The path was a bit muddy, but not too bad, and we wandered past fields of sheep to a grassy picnic area bordering the shallow river, really just a wide creek. We followed it downstream a short distance and found a section of the aqueduct that was still recognizable, a squared off channel dug into the ground which 2000 years ago had been coated with a mortar-like substance and covered with square paving stones. There must have been more water in the river at that time, because the flow now did not look nearly strong enough to have supplied that much water to the citizens of Nîmes. We had learned at the museum yesterday that the Romans used more water per capita than the people of Nîmes use today.
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We climbed back up the hill into town, and found lamb meatballs with navettes (turnips) for lunch at one of the many brasseries lining the main street, just as the wind and rain started again. Luckily, there were only showers during the afternoon, and we were able to walk through both the old and newer parts of Uzès. For dinner we returned to the brasserie where we had eaten the first evening and both had vegetarian options. We still weren't sure what we would do tomorrow. There were no good public transit options for travelling to Sommières, and we didn't know if cycling there would be safe.
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