WRM S1E9 Italy Spain Tour 2023 Verdon Gorge, Tourtour, Pont du Gard, and Nimes

In this episode: We say goodbye to Antibes and a head inland to lavender country. We take a few detours to see the Verdon Gorge and the Pont du Galetas, with lunch in TourTour, before stopping in Valensole to the night.
Continuing on the next day we we run up to the hilltop town of Gordes, sneak our way thru Avignon and stopping at the amazing Pont du Gard. After we get thoroughly soaked we ride into Nimes for one night.

0:00 Intro
0:58 Map
1:35 Tourtour
3:19 Verdon Gorge
3:58 Pont du Galetas
5:30 Valensole
7:03 Gordes
8:00 Avignon
8:21 Pont du Gard
12:18 Nimes

Hi and welcome back. This is WeRideMotoz. My Name Is Glen. And I’m Carrie and today  we’re heading into lavender country. Today we’re heading away from the coast and into   lavender country we are going to  check out the french countryside. I often try to scope out an  interesting town or landscape  

Along the way so today we are going to  see a little town called Tourtour. It’s   listed as the “Prettiest little town  in the Sky” or something like that. It looks really cute so we’re going to check that  out and we should be hitting it for lunchtime

We rode up and viewed it from the top.  Verdon Gorge, I believe it’s called,   I think it says it’s the biggest canyon  in Europe so that was interesting. Yeah rode to the top, viewed it from the top. Rode down Across the bridge, parked,  then looked down in the water.

Now you got to remember this is getting  to be, we’re up in the mountains now,   and this is getting to be mid late  September (yeah) I think around the   18th 19th of September and there’s people  still down there and little paddle boats and

It was quite warm that day  lots of people down there Yeah they beautiful the blue turquoise  water was just absolutely gorgeous Watching all the people that came to  rent a boat and have no idea how to use Yeah they don’t know how to paddle a boat

Don’t know paddle or steer  (oh my goodness) it was funny I think we much fun watching that than  actually going out and paddling ourselves I think sometimes people watching is more   interesting than yeah some of the  other things it was pretty funny

After visiting that area then we headed into  lavender country now unfortunately when we’re   a month or two behind the actual harvest so it  (harvest) was long over so it was just kind of the  

Bare fields but I’m going to try to find it couple  pictures just to show you how beautiful it is in Lot of lavender. Lots of lavender  field but they were just kind of. They were dried and brown and. Yeah some  of them they were actually ripping up and  

Burning so I’m not sure what that was  about I never never figured that out. Maybe lavender only has a certain amount of  time it can live and it’s done maybe if you   know let us know. Yeah. We’re always  into finding out stuff. Yeah yeah.

We stayed in, I can’t  remember the name of the town. Well we’ll do that part when we know what the  name of the town is because our notes are all   done. Or I’ll just put it up there. Yeah let’s do  it but it was a cute little town and we rented a  

Little Airbnb just above um somebody had made the  the little top part of their house into a Airbnb A family that came from Albania (yeah) and they  were living in France and really nice couple. Yeah they were so excited on our bike we have  

Our stickers and they saw that we had  been Albania so they were very excited Oh he was excited he just he just puts his  hand up and says wait and he disappeared and   moments later he comes back and he’s  got his hooch (yeah) if we traveled  

Through eastern that eastern Europe on 2018 I  guess it was, man everybody had their Hooch. And they want to share it,  they’re very proud of it. Yeah so he had two glasses, poured a shot,  we downed it, shook hands and carried on.

And she gave me a bunch of little lavender  sachet with. Is that what they are called? I just called them lavender  balls! Oh lavender balls. Makes my clothes smell purdy. Yeah  so we stuff those into the panniers   and we would remember our day in lavender country.

Today we’re leaving Valensole, leaving the  Lavender Fields behind and headed to Nimes. Once again I found a hilltop  town to check out along the way. We stopped there for a little snack. So we did a little stroll around town and then headed out.

Our route first took us around  these 14th century walls of Avignon These 10ft thick walls were built when the Pope  resided here which was between 1309 and 1377. We’re back on our way and our next stop  is the Pont du Gard, which is an an old  

Roman ruin from the first century and it’s  basically a bridge and an aqueduct system. Yeah it’s part of a 50 km long aqueduct  system that took water into Nimes. The rain had that up by time we got  there so that was a bonus and we were  

So excited to see the ruin that we  just took our jackets off tied them   on the bike and left the umbrella behind  was going to become a bit of a problem In 1743 the new pedestrian bridge  was built to allow pedestrians and  

Carts to cross and that’s the part that  we actually crossed when we went over   to the other side so that’s what’s  existing right now yeah that still   exists today it’s totally separate  from the actual original roman ruin We went down to the river and  walked underneath the bridge

Uh just amazing to see because  the precise engineering it would   have taken to have the right  slope for the water to flow. Yeah they would have had to basically survey 50 km   of yeah of line to get this to the city  and do what they wanted it to do. Yeah

And then we decided to go up  the stairs to the top of it Which was an amazing views from up there amazing  how tall this is I believe it’s 50 m high You can walk up a set of stairs to get to  the top but you can’t walk over the top of  

The actual aqueduct so you can take a view of it  but the interesting thing is you can turn around   and see the tunnel system or a portion of the  tunnel system that the water actually ran through Mhm so this is part of the aqueduct  system that took water into Nimes  

This is one of the tunnels that the water  would have flowed through and then uh it   meets up with the aquaduct that they built  over the bridge up here. Pretty amazing. Which is where we stood while it poured  rain (yeah) We tried to hide in there  

Hopefully it would the rain would  pass quickly but that was not to be. No we had to walk home in the rain.  Yeah we got a little drenched. The walk of shame. Yeah but  wow what an amazing site.

Once the water gets into Nimes it enters a cistern  catchment system. Castellum I think it’s called. Yeah and this is at this point it’s  all they built it with different   tiers so that priority will go to  different portions of the system.

Yeah so the first part it would fill up and it  would go to all the wells in the city squares.   The majority of the people could get their water  that way. Then if they had enough water it would  

Fill up I think the next one was actually for  the gardens and The fountains, and then the   wealthy people was the next level. They could  get water if they had enough and then for the   baths. I think the bath were the last priority.  So it was an interesting way they had that.

No bath just use the perfume. Yeah yeah. We put on our wet coats and we’re going into  Nimes for the for the night and it rained. It was yeah it was in generally a pretty  soggy soggy day and we rolled into Nimes.

After having a bit of trouble figuring out  how to get into our apartment in Nimes it   is very cute and we’re glad that we got  in because it is now I try to show you   pouring outside you can hear that and see that  it’s pretty heavy we’re already a little wet  

So we’re going to just lay everything  out to dry out and uh then when we’re   feeling a little more refreshed we’ll go  see what there is on the menu for tonight. Because of the heavy rain the restaurants  packed up all their tables and chairs so  

We were kind of on our own so I think we just  went to the grocery store and made a salad. So after we had our supper it actually  stopped raining so we headed out to check   out the city a little bit there’s  lots of uh roman ruins in Nimes.

They have a huge amphitheater  there (mhm) probably probably   one of the best or is the best preserved. Yeah. It’s it’s really nice, anyway  couldn’t go inside it was closed   up but apparently they still use this  thing this day for concerts and. Yeah.

It starts to rain again so Glen decided he wanted  to go back to the apartment so he headed back and   I grabbed the umbrella and set out for a stroll of  my own to check out some more sites in the city.

So they have beautiful streets there is  the Maison Carree I believe. It is the   very well preserved roman structure  I think it was a temple at one time. Yeah I wandered down this  beautiful street with the canal and it led me to this garden.

It was built in the 17th century actually  at a public park I think I read that it   was built just after Versailles and  it was actually quite a amazing thing   because they built it as a public  park and not just for the royalty.

There’s the first century Temple of Diana they  call it but they’re not sure if it was actually   a temple. They think maybe it was a library, part  of a bigger structure that was there at the time. it’s all sorts of sweeping stair  cases that went up the hill Water and fountains.

Some statues yeah it was an interesting  uh interesting to walk around. Definitely Nimes is a city that we  could have spent more time in but we   were happy to have the little bit of time we had And our next episode we are heading out  to Carcassonne (yeah I’m not sure) and  

Uh this is a really a really  neat Place. Yeah I loved it. Yeah if you like this video please uh like  and subscribe and leave a comment and it’ll be   appreciated and we’ll see you in the next  episode. Yeah thank you for joining us.