PONT DU GARD

Yesterday we visited this amazing tribute to Roman engineering, an aqueduct built between AD 38 and AD 52. A thousand men were employed and more than 50,000 tonnes of stone were used.

It was used to convey water from a spring near Uzes to Nimes and is wonderfully preserved. I was totally bowled over by it.

It is a World heritage site and more info is available from their website.

Our other treat yesterday was visiting the town of Aigues-Mortes (pop.6500) which apparently looks today almost exactly as it would have done when it was built around 1300.

The town, built by Louis 1x as his Mediterranean port for the Crusades. It is completely walled and the picture at right shows part of the wall.

Over the years the Rhone deposited silt all around the town so that now it is completely landlocked. The shallow lagoon around the twon fill with sea water which then evaporates and so today there is a major salt industry here.

You can walk right around the wonderfull preserved ramparts, about a mile, which we did, from where you can look down into the town,out to the Mediterranean, and the surrounding countryside, lagoons and mountains of salt.

Visiting these ancient sites always brings home to me just how young a country is our homeland New Zealand. And also how lucky they are that they do not experience earthquakes here as most of these ancient monuments would not survive even a mild shake.