The title will mean something to those old enough. It’s from a Monty Python sketch.
All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?
Our second stop on the way down to the South was Pont Du Gard. I’ll freely admit to never having heard of it. Mandy had heard of it and it’s what you might call a “bucket list” item.
Pont Du Gard is something the Romans did for us, well did for the French actually. My Monty Python references went unnoticed by Mandy.
Pont Du Gard is a Roman aqueduct and is about 2,000 years old. It’s one of those things where you stand there looking at it and just can’t believe it’s 2,000 years old. It’s rightly on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites and is the highest Roman aqueduct.
Something that amazed me was how they managed to get the gradient correct for carrying water. The gradient is 1 in 18,241. I know I measured it (no I did not). You need to pay to get to see it. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true, but it’s not an easy thing to see considering its size. If you want to walk on it, you have to pay, around 10 euros each, which we didn’t think too bad. There are enough things to do should you wish to spend the day there.
After spending some time at Pont Du Gard we went back to the caravan which was parked at a site nearby. We have a “pitch” by the river, if I was being unkind I’d say it was a piece of waste ground near the river. The site itself is amongst the trees, so much amongst them that it was a challenge getting the Unicorn IV onto the pitch. Driving through the woods was challenging as not only were we concerned about the width and length of the caravan as we drove through, we also had to be careful of the height due to overhanging branches. In the end, it was fine, some tight bends… BUT it was near the river…
We stopped here for three days and if we were doing it again we’d probably stay just one night, but in all honesty, it’s not a site we’d visit again.
We stayed at https://uk.lasousta.com/ . The main benefit was the proximity to Pont Du Gard. It was an average site, it had a small shop and a bar. There was a swimming pool, but we used the river. There were showers, but we used the river. I joke, of course, toilet and showers were average, usable.
There was nothing major wrong with the site and it’s very near the aqueduct if that’s what you’re visiting. There’s a small town nearby with a Lidl and some other shops, including a pharmacy which I visited. Now, I don’t want to give too much info but I had a little bit of trouble going to the loo. In France, you can’t buy “over the counter” medication from supermarkets such as headache tablets, cold remedies, or, in my case, a natural remedy to help you with some unblocking. Anyway, I went into the pharmacy after practicing my French using my phone app.
Fortunately, constipation is very similar in French. It’s just the “tion” you pronounced differently. At first, I had a look around the store, but there was nothing on the shelves. So I approached the tills. There were about 10 tills, each behind a little counter.
“Parlez vous Anglais?” I asked tentatively.
Thankfully she replied she did. It was a relief, excuse the pun, however, I was also slightly disappointed. I’d practiced “Avez-vous des médicaments pour la constipation” over and over.
I was asked a few questions; was it for me? was I regularly constipated? and if it hasn’t cleared in 3 days, see a doctor. “Yes, no and OK” were my replies in that order.
I left the pharmacy holding the little pack of tablets above my head as if I’d won the FA cup. Mandy was watching me from the car, head slightly shaking.
“I got them,” I said, as proud as I’d ever been. I didn’t let on that the pharmacist spoke English, I didn’t feel the need. A few days later, we noticed we had some suitable medication in the caravan’s medical kit. Not sure why I didn’t think to look there would have saved me some hassle. C’est la vie!
From here we drove down to our final destination Argeles Sur Mer. Which was about 4 hours, however, we did hit some traffic as there was an accident in front of us.
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