The temperature today was 7c from 8.00 am to 2.00 pm. It nudged 8c at 2.00 pm and hit the high of 9c at 5.00. Most of the time it felt like 4c (that's from the weather bureau's website). At 5.00, just as it peaked at 9c, Le Mistral blew in and Ches was almost blown off her feet coming out of the "fruit and legume" shop in town. That's the wind that blows the ears off of donkeys. The wind that the 17th-century Madame de Sévigné described as "bitter, freezing and cutting"

Speaking of donkeys, the Saucisson d'Arles we had at Cafe de la Fontain on Saturday and had to bring half home, that's the famous Donkey Salami.

When we walked back from town this morning at 8.30, all the mums arrived dropping their kids off at school. We haven't seen many SUV's on the roads around here but there at 8.30, there were dozens of them. What the.....

An interesting thing happened overnight. Ches woke up declaring that she didn't want to visit any more large towns. This echoed what I had said yesterday as we returned from Sete. I suspect she doesn't include Aix--en-Provence in that as she hasn't forgiven me for not stopping there in 2000. She did and does include Nimes. Despite there being many Roman attractions, I couldn't face the traffic.

It also occurred to me that if we aren't going to Nimes and we are going to miss out on seeing Abbayes that are closed until April or later, it's not much point worrying about what we don't see. We can't see everything and its pointless regretting what we miss.

With that thought in mind, we abandoned the day we had planned. Well, not Pont du Gard. As it remained firmly in the plan, we did a quick check of our guidebook and map and decided on the 55 minute drive to Uzes and then work our way back home via Pont du Gard. What an inspired decision in several respects. Uzes was a wonderful surprise and by the time we stopped at Pont du Gard it was the only hour or so all day when it wasn't raining.

Tom decided to have an off day as well. He started adding in exits on the roundabouts, A goat track counted as a road and "take the 3rd exit" had us going in the wrong direction. He must have done this three or four times and when I told him off, he responded by saying "Go left on the roundabout...." and then silence. Eventually he just stopped giving us instructions and I had to reactivate his voice for the return journey.

All of this didn't help Ches as she is having a hell of a time sitting in the passenger seat. She keeps thinking she is in the drivers seat and wants me to drive more to the left of my lane. She flinches and exclaims whenever I get close to the verge or more particularly the gutter. When I suggested that tomorrow she should try sitting in the seat behind me in future she said she wanted to give it a try.

One of Toms errors had us driving through Beaucaire and Tarascon (twin towns on the Rhone River). We had represented a US publisher called Tarascon and I'd always imagined that it would be a pretty town. Apart form the castles that challenge each other across the river, neither town has anything going for it.

We arrived in Uzes (OO-seh) at 11.55. The traffic was diabolical in the narrow one way streets and when we untangled from a jam where two streets merged, we missed the entrance to an underground carpark. "b*****" really loudly. 100m further on in the main street, there was a parking spot at a meter. The machine suggested it was .50 for 15 minutes. Ches dived into a pharmacy and asked for advice. .50 per 15 minutes but in 5 minutes time it will be free from 12.00 till 2.00. That's why the traffic jam, everyone's heading home for lunch.

Despite the drizzling rain and cold, we collected a map from the tourist info office and set off to see the 22 highlights. We probably only saw 10 of them. What we did see was a town unspoiled by tourism.

Pardon my Wikipedia:
Originally Ucetia, Uzès was a small Gallo-Roman oppidum, or administrative settlement. The town lies at the source of the Eure, from where a Roman aqueduct was built in the first
century BC, to supply water to the local city of Nîmes, 50 km (31 mi) away. The most famous
stretch of the aqueduct is the Pont du Gard, which carried fresh water over splendid arches across the river Gardon.and like many cloth-manufacturing centers (Uzès was known for its serges), the city and the surrounding countryside were strongly Protestant during the Wars of Religion in the 16th century, which wreaked havoc in Languedoc. Numerous of the city's churches were trashed and burned by furious Protestants: only two remain today. I copied these entries so that I could explain that the protestant cloth merchants became so wealthy that they built staircase towers onto their houses. In fact, several hundred years ago it was said that the French would travel to Umbria to see a town with such an admirable skyline when they had their own and ignored it.

One of the buildings is really interesting in that they demolished all but a section of a wall and built the circular staircase against it, leaving the rough edges on the outside where the circular section is attached.

Just a pause to say that at 8.30 pm here in our cottage, the wind is howling around the windows.

By 1.00 we were frozen rigid and luckily settled on a restaurant, Vieux Cafe d'Aniathazze on
Place Albert 1er, the main small square, just down from where we had parked our car.

Great local atmosphere and we had the Plat du Jour which at 15E consisted of a large steak, french fries as bad as at Bistrot Marin the other night, and two mini bowls of desert (Creme Brulee and a crumbly cheesy one that we just can't identify) and finally the best espresso I've had in France. Great value.

We now suspect that french fries in the south of France are always soggy.Probably because they are so close to Italy where they haven't got a clue about cooking potatoes except for gnocchi.

We left for Pont du Gard at 2.00 with Ches expecting it would be a brief stop and that we would be home by 3.30.

I don't know why I had always thought that it would just be standing in the countryside and that there would be a viewing platform or somewhere to stop on the roadside. I should know better. Large car and bus park, large tourist center with movies, exhibitions,cafe's etc. $18E for parking and admission for two, A walk down paths lined with olive trees etc curving to the right until "BANG" there it is towering over the river valley above us.

I guess the Pont du Gard has been the one site in all of the south of France that has captured my imagination forever. This might be the highlight for me. It is just spectacular. The Pharaohs may have built pyramids a thousand years earlier, but that was just stacking block of stone on top of each other and the Chinese may have built the Great Wall, but again, that was just building a wall. For engineering, nothing could surpass the Pont du Gard.

The amazing thing is that it is just an aqueduct. Just an aqueduct? Well ,it isn't a monument or a palace or a temple, just a means of transporting water. The Romans had a significant town in Nimes and a water supply, however the water wasn't fantastic. More to the point, at Uzes they discovered a spring that produced very good water. What to do, you build a 50km long viaduct to transport the water. Of course you do. Not only is it a visual spectacle but amazing that it was built in 5 years. When you want fresh water you want it now. The other observation I made was that the Romans in building infrastructure, didn't cut corners or do it on the cheap. They built infrastructure to last forever, no use by date, no urban or rural regeneration required.

We walked across the roadway at the base and then climbed the staircase on the other side of the gorge in the hope of finding a vantage point. We climbed and climbed till we came to the top of the aqueduct. There the stone steps finished and we saw a narrow dirt track off to the north. A hundred yards or so along, we met a couple of American women who said that a little further along there was a great view of the aqueduct. Was it ever. Absolutely amazing, and I made Ches walk up the slope to where I was standing before she turned around. Bang, there it is set against the gorge and the flat plain to the south.

So much for Ches's early afternoon. We didn't get home till 5.00.