Pont du Gard

This night, we stayed at a campground, very close to the ‘Pont du Gard’. It was rather late so we decided to walk through the rain, around large puddles and eat at the campground’s little restaurant. The kids got to colour their paper place mats *fun* The waitress brought a wrong dish and was pretty unfriendly. The more we were positively surprised about the good taste and texture of our pizzas *yummy*

The next day, we spent a lot of time preparing a paddle board trip on the Gardon River, although we had already chosen the campground site closest to the river. Our idea was to start close to the bridge and paddle towards or even through it.

Unfortunately, we did not get far at all. We tried to pull ourselves along the shore, hanging onto different branches, to overcome a part of the river with stronger current because we believed to see calm water beyond that point. But we just couldn’t conquer the current!

Some canoeists from Germany – funny coincidence ;oP – also paddled upstream towards the bridge. They told us, the river was not calm at all and our large board would be way too heavy and inflexible to go upstream. In the end, we had to follow their experience-based advice to give up.

Instead, we walked to the ancient Roman aqueduct bridge. It was also enjoyable to climb over or rest on some big rocks with a splendid view on the ‘Pont du Gard’.

We didn’t feel like spending money and time for a guided tour on the two upper bridge levels. Exploring the lowest level of the bridge and its surroundings was already a lot of fun, despite the many tourists.

We caught some nice views of the Gardon River when we walked over the bridge. A rather strenuous switchback hike up a hill let us take some pictures that would have been suitable for post cards ;oD

Magda hiked up so fast that we lost Erna and Alan. Luckily, we met again at the entrance to the third bridge level. We ran and hopped back down hill *yeah*