Saturday morning saw us shifting on again, but not very far and in awful conditions. It had rained all night and was still coming down fairly heavily. When I opened the door to walk over to the showers, we were sitting in puddles and all the daisies were underwater. A German couple in a large campervan moved before us, or at least tried to. They rocked their van, spun the wheels, but they had sunk fairly deep in the mud. Rodney went over to offer some help, but they weren’t going to budge at that point. They did manage to get out a bit later, with more German muscles involved. When we decided to set off, we were grateful for the fact that we had parked facing the roadway and had our levellers sloping in that direction. With the anti-skid mats placed in front of the levellers, Rodney started the engine and Eileen had no problem driving over to the road; no wheel spinning, no mud spraying and lots of relief.
We drove north to Orange, but with the clouds still emptying their contents, we opted for a quick drive around and found the best roundabout so far on our travels in France. A genuine Roman ‘Arc de Triomphe’ is sitting in the middle of a roundabout on the N7 heading north out of Orange. It makes it fun to go and see, but as the traffic was practically non- existent, we pulled over to the side and parked on the edge of the road; you couldn’t do that anywhere in England or Sydney, for sure!
Yep. It’s quite a roundabout…..
We didn’t want to head any further north, so turned around, drove round the Arc de Triomphe again and followed the road through Orange past the Théâtre Antique d’Orange, the huge remains of a Roman theatre. We really fancied a stroll, but the weather was so awful we opted to stay dry and headed back south to Châteauneuf du Pape.
The steep footpaths of the village were running with water and we were both a bit fed up by now, so we drove on to Camping L’Art d’Vivre, which on arrival, looked like it was still shut for the winter, but the gate was open, so we drove around in circles until we found a spot not too muddy, not too far from the shower block and with an electric point that worked. Someone finally turned up at 6pm, so we paid for one night and cheered ourselves up with a good meal and a movie. If the rain eases tomorrow, we will go back in to Châteauneuf du Pape and check out the wine shops.
Surrounding the village are the vineyards, some of which look really unusual because they are full of large, round stones known as ‘galets’. These soak up the sun during the day and reflect it back at night to the heat-loving Grenaches vines, whose grapes are apparently the main ingredient of red Châteauneuf du Pape wine.
The rain eased to showers on Sunday so we wandered the tiny streets of Châteauneuf du Pape taking some photos under the dull skies. Rodney did a tiny spot of wine tasting but came away with three bottles of ‘the best wine in the world’; maybe not the ones we purchased though…….?
Next stop on today’s agenda was at the Pont du Gard. It certainly is a magnificent structure and hard to believe that it was built nearly 2,000 years ago and is still standing. It is the tallest aqueduct that was built by the Romans, being 50 metres high and what remains is 360 metres long. It was part of a massive 50-kilometre canal built to supply water to Nimes. Over that distance, the fall of the canal is only 25centimetres per kilometre, it’s amazing how they could calculate that back then. We roamed around on both sides of the bridge, wishing that it wasn’t quite so cold and wet; it would be wonderful to see the honey coloured stone glowing in some sunshine, but that definitely wasn’t going to happen today.
It was warmer and drier inside the museum and art gallery, so we spent a bit of time in there. The exhibition in the art gallery was a bit ‘left of field’; one exhibit was a movie showing a man at a desk. A person would walk in and place an item on the desk. The man would then produce a mallet and smash, or squash the item and push the remains off his desk. We thought that was weird enough, but then he pulled out an ink pad and a block of A4 paper which he stamped the date on and then signed it. He handed the sheet of paper to the visitor, put the stamp, ink pad and the block of paper away and waited for the next visitor. That was it !!!! It happened over and over again……after watching about ten visitors have their ‘gift’ smashed and receive a bit of paper, we decided it was time to walk away and perhaps get some education in the museum.
Feeling rather damp and chilled by now, we decided to head in to Avignon and check in to Camping Bagatelle on the Ile de la Barthelasse, over the Rhône River from the Papal Palace. The island is apparently the longest river island in France and we’re hoping that it stays an island, high and dry, while we are sleeping on it. We’ve decided that if this rain is going to continue, it might be easier to be in a city.
