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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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 Â
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.
2 Comments
Great episode
Enjoyed your episode. With regards to the burning of the lavender fields, sadly lavender is going through a period of crisis in France. Pests are appearing and competition from other countries has increased thus the price farmers can get per kilo is dropping and as a result many farmers are burning their fields in order to replant the land with more profitable crops.