A big day at Pont Du Gard

We left Carcassone and had a few hours drive to get to Pont du Gard - the Roman constructed viaduct.

On the way we went through the Minerva wine area where there were miles of vines. There were some nice towns that we went through.

On arriving at Pont du Gard we parked in the big car park on the right bank. By this time I realised that Wednesday nights were the big band, wine tasting and food truck night - with sound and light shows on the aqueduct every night in summer.

So when we arrived mid afternoon it was quite busy. There were hundreds of people crossing and around the aqueduct- and also many in the river or canoeing down the river.

We walked up to the aqueduct and saw how amazing it is - and still standing after 2000 years!

The top level carried the water across from one side of the gully to the other.

The road across is a recent addition running just beside the aqueduct so you can see it well but not touch it - as many have done in the 1700 and 1800s with their graffiti.

We walked across to the other side - the left bank- where the museum is and went to check it out. It was nice to be inside in the aircon as the temperature outside was really hot and humid. There were about 20 people in the huge museum that we saw while we were in there - a bit disappointing for human intelligence - but good for us.

We learned a lot about the building techniques used and the measurements and tools used.

The aqueduct was part of a huge engineering project by the Romans to run water from a spring in Uzès to the city of Nimes along a 50km route.

The fall of the water from top to bottom along the route was only 12.3 meters in total - an average of 25cm drop per kilometer. It took 24-30 hours for the water to travel 50 km. There are many smaller viaducts along the route. However the Pont du Gard is the highest Roman constructed viaduct on the route - and also in the world.

Nimes already had enough water - but the Romans had decided they wanted to make the city super luxurious - and rich - so apparently a huge water supply was the way to go about it.

This led to many bath houses and lots of cooling pools in houses - and the residents becoming much cleaner having a bath every day. The whole water flow was in operation for 500 years. It gradually silted up with limestone - and also was being corrupted by farmers making holes along the route to get water to irrigate their fields. By this time the rulers were Visigoths and Francs - and no maintenance was being done. So it’s amazing it lasted until then.

The stone blocks were all cut by hand from the quarry 600m away and everything finished off onsite. A lot of slaves would have been required to do the transporting and lifting. Many trained stonemasons were at the top of the hierarchy as they had to fit it all together. The stones sticking out were used to prop up their wooden scaffolding that shaped the arches to place the stones on until they were complete.

They had many lifting devices powered by human sized guinea pig wheels - probably with slaves inside.

The sight lines was done by elementary devices that could be quite a few cm off compared to todays tools. So it’s amazing they managed to make it all work.

After a couple of hours in the museum we came outside to a slightly cooler atmosphere and after an icecream walked back to the van and heard the band had started up. Getting to the other side we saw the wine tasting had started and the food trucks were there.

Many people were arriving dressed up carrying tables and chairs.

We first got into swimming cossies and went for a quick dip in the river. It was very stony on the bottom but there were large square sandstone rocks that had perhaps been mistakes or rejects from the aqueduct. I’m sure there is lots of archeology to be found in the river.

After a lovely cool down we then went back to the van and got changed into evening gear and headed down to the action with our chairs.

We started with the wine tasting - 6 euro for a glass to keep, a booklet of the hundreds of wines to taste a pencil - and as many tastes as you liked- and tickets for 2 full glasses.

We enjoyed tasting many wines with different grape varieties we are not used to - roussanne, cinsault, carignan are examples. There were 28 wineries with 3 wines - we tasted about 4 wineries white and red wines - so we only scratched the surface.

We then went to find some food at the food trucks. We both chose a porchetta with confit onions in a home made pita bread. It was also the shortest queue!

After enjoying the food we had our 2 full glasses of favorite wine from our tastings - a viognier and a cooled merlot - good for the hot night.

We then enjoyed the light show on the aqueduct- some related to nature.

After it all finished we carried our chairs back to Gus and drove about 10 minutes up the road to a quiet village for the night. We had a good sleep!