Woke up to the sound of rain this morning, so we decided to have a leisurely brunch before moving on. I think it’s the first time we’ve ever set the smoke alarm off in the van. It couldn’t handle the blue smoke from the fried serrano ham 🤣 I gave it a thorough blast of the new Zara home spray after we’d opened all the windows then proceeded to cough for the next hour! 🙄
Made our way to the Pont du Gard, thinking that we’d park up and wait for the rain to stop. Just as we got there, it did, and we managed to go and have a good look around. Lucky really, as it was €9 to park!
What a spectacular Roman aqueduct – three tiers of arches spanning the River Gardon. No wonder it’s a UNESCO world heritage site! It’s good that there are viewpoints on both sides from both high above and down on the pebble beaches. You can also see where people have carved their names and towns into the stonework with some of them apparently by the original builders.
Not sure it needs the massive visitor centre, gift shop, tat stalls etc but it definitely needs the huge car park. Even today, with black skies and thunder, it was incredibly busy.
Just got back to the van as the heavens opened and boy did it rain! We’d planned to go on to Avignon next, but as we got towards the ring road, it seemed to be under water already. Floods everywhere!
We came up with a plan B of going up Mont Ventoux …I quickly checked the weather and it was forecast to be sunny with a bit of cloud around 5pm. As we started the ascent of the 1900 metre climb, the weather seemed to be getting worse, not better. It’s good road of course because the Tour de France comes up here, but lots of hairpins and very steep. As we got towards the top, there was thick fog and strong winds added to the heavy rain.
We pulled into the car park and I checked the weather again – 😱there’s another Mont Ventoux. The one my phone bought up was somewhere near Rouen in the north!
Oh well, suppose we’re out of the floods…gonna be a wild night! 🤣
