The Mistral was still howling at the windows and doors when we woke up around 6.30. Who cares, it has blown all the rain and clouds away and the sky is blue. With a blue sky we can cope with anything.

We took our morning walk into town and bought soup for tonight's dinner. I photographed the town again because there are now blue skies to set off the creamy stone of most of the buildings.Now all the town needs is for the Plane trees to be in full leaf and it would be stunning.

We set out at a leisurely 10.00ish. First stop just a few km.down the road is Alphonse Daudet’s windmill known also as "Moulin Saint Pierre" (Saint Peter’s windmill), one of the few left in Provence.

Not only had we decided that Nimes was just too big a town to visit, we even had doubts about how much time we wanted to spend in Arles. As it eventuated, probably more than we ended up with. Instead we decided to take our time visiting some small sites where we didn't expect to see too many other tourists.

We were able to tilt at Saint Peter for ten minutes or so before a couple of small groups arrived. Actually, the majority of tourists we have come across are French couples around our own age, so it would seem that the grey nomads of France also elect to holiday out of season, with their dogs.

Set on a very rocky headland above the very pretty town (Fontvielle), it is high enough to catch any wind. The sails have be stripped of their canvas covering and fixed in place but still quite impressive.

Next came a real challenge; where would we find the two Barbegal Roman aqueducts and the remains of a Roman mill near the intersection of the D33 and D82. Actually, I have just provided a better description of where to find them than any website or travel guide we have used. Traveling from Fontvielle south on the D33, you turn left at the D82 and its just a couple of hundred meters where you have to park on the side of a very narrow country road in the middle of olive groves. No special car park and not much signage other than the one standard brown roadside sign back on the D33 saying "Aqueduc". No arrows or any help to find it or them. And therein lies another complaint; this site is relatively small compared with Pont du Gard but in many respects no less significant.

Here is what the travel guides should tell you, apart form where to find them like I had done above. There are two aqueducts running side by side, parallel with the D33. They merge when they meet a massive rock where one channel is carved through the rock for some 20 meters and then on the other side there is a steep slope down the rock face. On this slope are the remains of the 16 flour mills.

Wikipedia at least helps with this description:
The mill consisted of 16 waterwheels in two
separate descending rows built into a steep hillside. There are substantial
masonry remains of the water channels and foundations of the individual mills,
together with a staircase rising up the hill upon which the mills are built.
The mills apparently operated from the end of the 1st century until about the
end of the 3rd century. The capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5
tons of flour per
day, enough to supply bread for as many as 10,000 of perhaps 30-40,000 inhabitants of Arelate at that
time. It is thought that the
wheels were overshot water wheels with
the outflow from the top driving the next one down and so on, to the base of
the hill. The archaeological museum in Arles actually has models of the complex and there is a suggestion that this was a major industrial complex that wasn't matched again until the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700's. When not grinding grain it could be used to saw timber and stone.

So, not as spectacular as Pont du Gard but in terms of engineering, just as awe inspiring.

Surprisingly, there must have been thirty or so Muslin French with backpacks and hiking sticks taking a break on the site of the mills. Apart form them, probably only a couple of other groups arrived in the half hour or so we spent there.

The next challenge was beyond us. Were pretty sure we know where the four Hypogeum of Castellet are, but we couldn't figure out how to get to them. The wire fences along the roadside didn't appear to have a break or gate and we gave up after trying to find it before and after our visit to the Abbaye de Montmajour.

The Hypogeum are neolithic burial chambers. Three on one side of the road and one on the other hidden in scrub on the rocky outcrops. Apparently you have to climb down into narrow holes in the rock to access them and given I had to be tranquillised for my MRI last week, I don't think I missed too much.

Again, we later found that all the artifacts from the tombs are on display at the Arles archaeological museum.

200 meters away is the Abbaye de Montmajour. This massive benedictine abbey was built between the 10th and 18th centuries on an island (make that a bloody big rock) surrounded by swamps. As the swamps were drained and turned into farm land, they must have become more exposed to attack, so they built a tower for defense, right over the monks graves that had been dug into the rock.

The entire structure is built on this massive rock base, so my question was, how did they affix the stone blocks to the rock to form a foundation. Did they just chisel the rock till it was level and then fix the first stone block with mortar (lime, soil and water). O.K., so our house has no foundations and just sits on a bed of clay that rises and falls with the rain, so a castle or abbey built on a bloody big rock isn't going to rise and fall, but then again, this one has a tower so high you'd think it would have to be perfectly vertical so as not to topple sideways.

What's with all this fascination with engineering? Too late for that career choice ... mercifully for most.

The most significant feature of this abbey is that the monks were buried in the rock itself. Basically holes were chiseled into the rock, wide at the shoulders and narrow at the feet with a semicircular section at the top for the head. I guess they then lay a slab of rock over the top. Today, all that is left are these holes cut into the sloping rock and as I said above, the top section has a bloody great tower built above it, so they really are entombed for all time.

We climbed the tower and wandered the abbey with The Mistral howling around our ears.There are no signs of fireplaces or any heating in the entire abbey. I can't imagine how cold it must have been in winter.

It was 2.00 before we made it to Arles. Fortunately I found a parking spot right beside the walls; however it was a couple of km to the tourist office and then about the same to the Arena. That wasted half an hour. Almost everything was closed except for the cafe directly in front of the main entrance. A prime location. The up side was that it was a sun trap. The downside was the waiter. There were no other customers waiting to be served and it took 25 minutes to order, be served and eat a piece of burned toast with grilled ham, tomato and goats cheese.

We had purchased a multi pass ticket. Individual entries are around 7E and for 9E we could enter any number. That's if we could get to them before they closed.

Well, was proved correct again when I say that major monuments are better observed form a distance, not from being on or in them. In the case of the Amphitheatre, the interior was fully filled with metal seating (ready for the bullfights which begin next week). It was however a reasonable advantage point to photograph the surrounding town. Even so, we were in and out in 20 minutes. The same for the Theater, however we did stay long enough to sit facing the stage and contemplate that our "butts" were in contact with a seat that someone had sat on 2,000 years ago.

Ches had suggested earlier that the Archaeological Museum would be the highlight, and so it proved. Here we saw the artifacts collected from the Hypogeum; lots of arrow heads etc. but also bracelets and jewelry, all from the neolithic era some 10,000 BC.

It's only when you visit the museum that you appreciate how significant Arles was as a Roman city. Not only in terms of public buildings but in its commerce and cultural life.

Apart from a mini-colosseum Amphitheatre (probably a third of the size), and the Theatre, it used to have a circus. That's a 450m long track separated by a wall down the middle with obelisks at either end. Built for horse and chariot racing as well as occasional cavalry fighting or animal hunting, it could seat 20,00, about the same as the Ampitheatre. It was built on swampy ground with thousands of timber piers to support it (similar to the foundations in Venice). At the end of the empire it was stripped of most of its stone, as was the top tier of the Amphitheatre,

The Theatre was built around 100 years before the Amphitheatre, just a stones throw away. I made the observation that culture was fine for a hundred years and then they wanted blood & gore. We also visited the Baths of Constanine. There is only a small section left today as much of it was torn down and the stone used to build houses that hem the remains in. Still enough to appreciate a culture that provided a vast bath house where men and women of all classes could meet before the evening meal and bathe and socialize.

The two most recent additions to the collection in the museum are a magnificent bust of a young Julius Caesar and a 31m long shallow draft barge. Apparently the Romans just disposed of their rubbish by dumping it in the river here in Arles, so they are finding all sorts of amazing artifacts these days. In the case of the barge, it more likely capsized and sank. It was used for transporting rough cut stone blocks for building. The stone was quarried 6km north of Arles and had to be transported down the river to either Arles or even the Camarge. Going up the Rhone required around thirty men to tow the barge with ropes. No harness (the Romans didn't think of that despite their amazing technology), just thirty men with ropes slung over their shoulders towing the barge upriver. Coming back down they had the current and a large oar for steering. Possibly turning in to the bank, the boat took in water and sank. Only discovered in 2004, it is now restored and and a new wing built on to the museum to house it.

Unfortunately they were looking to close the museum when one of the attendants who had some English joined us and gave us a 15 minute tour to the exit. When he showed us the models of the 16 mills we had seen in the morning, we suddenly had an appreciation for what we had seen. There is also a large room with relaid mosaic floors. Absolutely stunning.

Arles supported Caesar in the 4 year civil war with Pompey and was rewarded by Caesar with trade preferences and many of his legions given land. Virtually all trade between Gaul (France) was conducted through Arles. No wonder it was known as the "Little Rome of Gaul"

We had planned on a quiet day ahead of Ches's birthday trip to the Camargue and Aigue-Mortes tomorrow but it hadn't turned out that way.