A Day at the Pont du Gard - A Perfect Birthday Adventure

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark

The day we visited the Pont du Gard was my birthday and our day trip was utterly perfect.  We head off reasonably early, arriving at around ten thirty to a virtually empty car park. We planned to stay two hours or so before having lunch somewhere in a town nearby with the afternoon plan of just staying at home by the pool. Just in case the kids loved it here we confirmed with the lady in the information booth that we could leave and come back after lunch. We need not have bothered, we stayed eight hours and could have stayed longer.

The Pont du Gard can not be adequately described it must be experienced, the wonder of the ability of the Roman's to create such a wonder nearly 2000 years ago.

We arrived prepared, bringing a light picnic brunch, our bathers and towels, yoga mat, paints and other art supplies. We were able to get a little sun shelter right by the river and here we set ourselves up.

First we wadded in the water, dancing on the pebbles (ooch..ouch), feeling the tiny fish nibble our toes, listening to the croak of the frogs as the clouds of the morning began to move along, leaving a beautiful day in their place.

I love our home school class rooms, but this one will take some beating. Emma and I have been talking about the Romans since our visit to Bath back in January. We set up our paints and Emma and Julian both enjoyed some wet on wet painting time. Julian filled our water jars in the river and collected some tadpoles in the process. 

Before we had time to finish our paintings Rob pointed out that it was nearly two o'clock. We couldn't believe time had passed so quickly. Luckily there was a lovely restaurant on a terrace overlooking the Pont and so birthday lunch was the next order of the day. Food in France is generally fabulous and this place did not disappoint.

We decided we would finish our paintings another day and began our long walk across the bridge and over to the visitors centre. Julian caught a ride on Rob's shoulders making me very nervous whenever they got close to the edge. That's one heck of a long drop.

We enjoyed seeing the masons marks and medieval graffiti carved into the walls, tributes from masons from one era to those of another whose knowledge had advanced building technology so dramatically.

 On the other side we found some ancient olive trees, reputed to have been planted in Spain 1108 years ago, and later transplanted here. I felt compelled to hug one of these beautiful trees, embarrassing my nine year old in the process, but it was so very special.

The museum was very good and helped to reinforce a lot of the home schooling had done this week. There is additional hands on area for kids which was brilliant. The kids could use a scale to weigh different foods and then work it how much Roman money was required to pay for their shopping and other fun activities.

It was about this point that we realised that it was six o'clock and we had spent the entire day here and we still had to trek back the other side to get back to the car, which took a good twenty minutes or so. With a forty minute drive to get back to St Remy before us we realised that our plans to eat at home were out the window and we decided that it we were going to have the kids up late we may as well do it in style. So we head off in the opposite direction and made our way to Uźes for dinner. 

At one point I had decided to stay in Uzés but found accommodation really difficult to find. It turns out that there was a be a dance festival on there this week and as much as we love dance we thought it could have been a bit overcrowded. As it turns out the festival  was cancelled on opening night and Uzés was very quite when we arrived for dinner at seven o'clock, but we really fell for the place.

We had a delicious dinner at l'Oustel in Place aux Herbes, where all the diners were watching the World Cup Soccer on big screen TV's and the atmosphere was terrific.

The kids were asleep by the time we made it home at ten o'clock but I couldn't sleep for hours, it had been such a wonderful birthday.