We started last week with a fairly intense two days of preparing the property for a photo shoot - the house was to be listed with a new estate agent. So, full days of mowing lawns, pool cleaning, sweeping terraces, and cleaning both houses from top to bottom. The wind was blowing like mad in the few days before, which didn't help on the leaf collection front, but luckily the day of the shoot was calm.
Mission accomplished, we took off for another holiday on the Wednesday, this time across to western Provence. Friends of ours from Nelson, Chas and Judy, were spending the week in a gite (read "bach" for the southern hemisphere readers, "holiday home" for the northern hemisphere) with Ross and Ngaire, so we wanted to meet up with them, plus explore the area which is just a bit too far away for a day trip.
We began with a serious injection of history, at the Pont du Gard, west of Avignon. Built in the 1st Century AD (yes, we're talking about 2000 years ago) by the Romans to transport water from Uzes to Nimes, it is the highest of all Roman aqueduct bridges.
The total distance from Uzes to Nimes is 50k, and the height drops by only 17 metres, with the bridge descending only 2.5cm (I love Wikipedia, even I can sound like an historical engineer!) so an amazing feat of construction. You can't walk on the actual bridge itself any more, but a bridge has been built immediately beside the lower level, to enable people to walk across it.
We loved these little "picnic pods" which were dotted around the river banks - an incredibly simple but stylish solution to providing shady spots to sit and eat - some had little low tables in the centre too.
We were on a roll with the history theme, so the next day we went to Vaison la Romaine. This is a village with extensive Roman remains, so we're still talking 1st Century architecture here. We began by driving across the Roman bridge which is still in normal day to day use by cars and people!
We were interested to find that we could climb all over the remains had we been so inclined, there wasn't the usual fence/barrier/sign to stop and close contact with such old architecture. Having said that, it all looked pretty sturdy, and has stood up to a lot more over the years than a few children climbing over the tops of the walls.
I don't think the Romans were carnivorous, but they could have cooked up half a dozen people in this pot...
The only areas that were understandably out of bounds were the mosaic floors which were very well preserved with a lot of information about the design and patterns.
Apparently there is evidence that the Roman village continues under all the modern houses that surround the excavated area, for example they know this road continues at least another 50 metres beyond here.
We wondered whether the fact that your house is built on a Roman village makes it more, or less valuable...???
The history teacher's daughter in me can't go past a church without having a look, so we had a quick swing past Vaison's cathedral. It was fairly stark in the overall design, but looking closer there was some very ornate detailed writing half way up the outside walls.
And some beautifully carved pillars.
Vaison also rates highly in our league table of classic examples of French parking.
Here we have the "I'll only be a minute... no-one will notice if I park on the yellow lines....on a bend.....with a car park 5 metres behind me"
In the aforementioned car park, we have Mr White Van Man, who, realising he is slightly too long for a conventional space, comes up with the brilliant solution of angle parking....across a pedestrian crossing!
One of these days Lew is going to get punched on the nose by an irate French man who thinks Lew is an undercover council warden collecting evidence for prosecution. So far there has been no sign of any drivers nearby, they probably leave their cars parked like that all day!
Up the hill, in the relatively "modern" medieval part of the village, I finally found photographic evidence of something I've been looking for on the subject of knockers. Apparently you can date genuine French hand door knockers by the finger that the ring is situated on, so here, the ring is on the 4th finger...
while here, its on the 3rd finger.
Unfortunately my information source couldn't tell me the relevant dates for each finger, so I'm still working on finding that out! And what about the hand with no ring on any finger? Was this an early way of notifying the village of your availability, an historic Facebook relationship status?!?
On day 3, we were over history, so went for a walk up into Les Dentelles behind Sablet. Dentelles translates as "teeth", which turned out to be a reasonable name for the area....
By this time, the mistral wind was blowing like anything so although the views were stunning, we didn't stop for long on the tops.
The mistral is probably the only down side about this area of Provence. It would certainly drive me mad if I lived there, as its incredibly strong, and generally blows for about 5 days in a row. Apparently the mistral has been successfully used as a valid excuse for murdering one's wife...."I couldn't help it my lord, the wind you see, it was just all too much, messing with my hair, blowing leaves around the garden, I just had to kill my wife"!! Only in France!
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