Motorway Madness in Marseille

Our next destination was/is Arles (to see the Roman Arena) so we plugged it in the Sat Nav but I forced it to take the scenic road around the coast where we stopped at a beach and had another swim and lunch.  Unfortunately mid afternoon in the middle of a motorway (3rd lane from the verge) in Marseille our rear passenger side tyre blew out.  So all our brand spanking new breakdown gear got some use and long story short we got the spare on. By this time it is late on a Saturday on a bank holiday weekend so it looks like we will have to wait till Monday for a new tyre.  We made our way very gingerly to a stopping place for the night where we were joined by 3 other motorhomes.  For all our touring troubles, on arrival at the aire, we were confronted by a sight that put things in perspective.  As we were pulling in we saw an ambulance head the other way and when pulling into our space we noticed why, a motorcycle appeared to have left the road into the ditch and fence.  We both hope the two people will be okay and it reminded us why we have never been on motorcycles.

We pretty much had to wait out Sunday (through a combined fear of breakins and having no spare tyre), which was unfortunate as it was a nice day.  We did however make a walk down to the town (Sausset Les Pins).  There was the Sunday market on which was interesting, unfortunately strong currents make swimming here inadvisable. Since we had down time we decided to sand and paint the wing mirrors.  They came up alright since I'm very inexperienced with a spray can.

So on Monday morning we went looking for fuel (we were due to get fuel when the tyre blew out) and somewhere to change the tyre.  The first petrol station on route was very expensive but we had no choice and they had a service centre, so we put a little petrol in and tried to ask the service guys about the tyre.  Unfortunately noone had a word of English and we have no French so understanding was limited on both sides.  I was however able to interpret their gasps when I lifted the bonnet and showed them the blown tyre.  Anyway someone made a phonecall but they couldn't help us, however one of the guys very generously and patiently drew us a map to what turned out to be a major service centre and store (bit like Halfords in UK, or combining a tyre service with a repco store in NZ).  We bought a 2nd bigger jack so should something happen again it will be easier and about an hour and a half later and 85 euro lighter the tyre was replaced, however as like so many service centres they can't/won't hoist vans due to low clearance we will have to put it on the van ourselves.  Oh and today the weather is bad, we got to Arles (saw Pink Flamingos on the way) where we wanted to see a couple of Roman sites but it was teeming with rain, so we just had lunch in the van and drove past the amphitheater (we went into the one in Verona so we are old hats anyway).  We are spending the night at an aire (official stopping place for motorhomes) about halfway between Arles and Nimes in Bellegarde and will bus to Nimes tomorrow before driving up to Pont du Gard (a massive Roman Aqueduct).

The morning tricked us the sun was out early and we thought we were in for a good day, unfortunately when we went out it turned very overcast, a little drizzly and cold.  So we got caught out without enough clothes or our umbrellas.  However we tried to make the best of it busing into Nimes and seeing the Arena, Temple, Covered market and Archaeology Museum.  We also bought a few books in preparation for our trip to Morocco.

From Bellegrade we headed to Pont du Grad which is a massive Roman bridge, part of an Aqueduct system something like 50Km long that went to Nimes.  We spent the whole day there, walking trails and visiting the museum.  The brochure shows it illumination at night and we hoped that we could see that but for whatever reason when we went back after dark it wasn't lit up.

In the morning we changed our tyres around as the replacement had been in the spare well since the shop couldn't hoist the van.  Then we drove for a couple of hours inland to the Cirque de Navacelles.  We found out about it at Pont du Gard.  It turns out France has a Grand Sites scheme and this was one as was Pont du Gard.  It is apparently the largest canyon in Europe.  We stumbled on an information centre nearby and got all stocked up on brochures then went for a look. Unfortunately the sun angle made photos difficult but it was pretty impressive just like the pictures we had seen.  We then tossed a coin to decide if we drive down and up through the canyon or take the long way round as I couldn't decide.  The canyon won which was good because it turned out to be fine and the van did very well.  So we got to see the little village in the bottom and get views from the bottom.  There was a very nice sunset this evening and we saw a family of wild pigs run across the road.  The last part of our route saw us driving through an area that looks out over the flatland towards the Mediterranean and this provided nice views of the lights.

In the morning we saw an 11th Century Romanesque style bridge called Pont du Diable before heading to Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert which has a world heritage list Abbey.

Pont du Diable

Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert Abbey

From there we drove round to Lac du Salagou which is a man made reserviour and the area is on the Grand Sites of France list.  We had lunch there and chilled out for a bit, it is the most amazing maroon red soil and rocks.

Mid afternoon we went looking for Pont Vieux around Beziers (the icon on our map looked interesting) but we didn't really know where it was.  Once in Beziers we still hadn't seen any signs so I checked the Sat Nav and plugged in one of the bridges in town and fortunately that took us to the right area.  We didn't really manage to get the view we had wanted but got a couple of okay photos. Still don't really know what we saw so will have to look that up.

So obviously due to our recent lack of internet we are a long way behind, since we are posting this from the south of Spain but hope to catch up soon.