Thursday 26 June: Avignon

We arrived in Avignon quite late on Wednesday evening as there was a queue to get through one of the locks. There are quite a few locks to go through and we are travelling upstream so we rise up through the locks. A number of them are also power stations.

We had signed up to do an optional excursion to this ancient Roman aqueduct near Nimes in the morning, which meant a 30 minute bus trip and then a different excursion to do wine tasting at Chateauneuf du Papes in the afternoon. That meant we didn’t actually venture into Avignon itself but got some nice photos of the main monuments, being the Papal Palace and this tower place pus the original Pont d’Avignon, which got damaged at some stage and only about a third of it is still standing.

Looking across at Avignon with the cathedral, Papal Palace and what’s left of the historic bridge at the left.

The Aqueduct Vers-Pont-du-Gard is spectacular and thoroughly worth a visit. It’s a world heritage site and a stunning example of Roman engineering. The Aqueduct is about 50km long and transported water from a spring in Uzes across various terrain to the city of Nimes. In places it is underground but here is above as needed to cross the river Gard.

When you look back into the sun from below the Aqueduct you get a reflection in the river.it is counterintuitive as you don’t expect a decent photo looking in that direction.

Looking towards the Aqueduct from the other side. That lower level of arches is the ‘new’ bridge, which is actually several hundred years old.

The original Roman one is on the right. They built a set of lower arches in the 1700s to enable traffic to go across. The water flowed in a covered channel right at the top.

You can walk across the lower level on the ‘new’ bridge.

The museum had some excellent models and drawings showing how it was constructed. Pretty ingenious for the first century AD.

Chateuneuf du Papes is the name of a small village that hosts a number of wineries all able to produce wine under the name Chateauneuf du Papes. It is named after the summer residence of the popes, who were in France for 90 years at some stage. One of those popes planted grapes to produce wine, which was a safer drinking alternative to water.

Maison Bouachon, which is the winery where we did our tasting.

This tasting was set up for other people. Ours was next door.

We had a tasting of 4 wines in the historic wine cellar, a white Grenache, 2 red GSM (blend of Grenache, Syrah and Monverdes) and a dessert Grenache. All very nice especially the second red but nothing better than we make in NZ. Production actually happens in a modern winery building a few kilometres away. The vast majority of their wines are reds and they are not allowed to bottle and sell rose under the Chateauneuf du Papes label.

On return to the boat we had our usual happy hour cocktails and then dinner, followed by guitars and dancing from a local group who were excellent.

A fine time was had by all and we enjoyed the dancing. All adding to our overall fitness!