Tuesday 17th September

Our start this morning was a little delayed thanks to Apple. I made use of the unusually good campsite WiFi to install iPadOs 18 but the update still took forever.

It was an hour’s drive west to the other side of Avignon (fortunately our bridge was complete!) to the Pont du Gard.

The Pont du Gard!!! A two thousand year old Roman aqueduct, built to carry 40,000,000 litres of water a day, over thirty miles to the people of Nîmes. It was built to an incredible degree of precision with an average gradient of only 1cm in 180m.

It has been one of my long held ambitions to come here and it certainly lived up to my expectations! The bridge looks magnificent and is in a majestic setting. The french National Trust, or whoever, have done a great job with the landscaping and siting of a large car park, well away from the valley. Not a bad place for a picnic?

Now we turned the vans northward and drove up on to a plateau covered in vines and lavender and then down the other side into the valley of the Ardèche. We are going to spend the next couple of nights at Camping l’ Ardèchechois on the left bank of the river. This is a five star campsite, the poshest I’ve ever stayed on, but we are here because it is only three kilometres away from another long time ambition. But that’s for tomorrow.