Southwest France - end of our hiking

On this, the last hiking day, I slept reasonably well, awakening in darkness at 3:47 am.  What's with that? Back to sleep soundly, until the alarm, at dawn.

Sunrise over Collias

The breakfast here was the best yet.  Not only outside "en plein air," but Marie-Agnes offered good yogurt, the usual croissant and baguette, butter and homemade confiture, but also asked if we'd each like a boiled egg.  The unanimous answer was "Yes!"  She was very sweet and maternal and practical - saying we'd need that protein for our walk.  Of course, she was right.

Boiled eggs kept warm in the bell-shaped covers.

As we walked back through Collias to the trail, we passed a baker kneading bread in his store window,

I would have thought 9:00 was a late hour to be baking.

passed beneath the first arch of the Collias Bridge,

then walked away from the river onto tarmac, and after several right turns and going upward, walked a long way between forest on our right and cultivated land on our left, and a small mill dam.

Fairly high up on a ridge, between sizable estates, we passed a sign warning "swim at your peril" . . . Probably a reference to the river way down that lane on the right?

 There was also a ruined church, then a stone wall with a plaque marking the high point of the 2002 flood ("crue").

Finally, through the trees, we had a view of the grand Pont-du-Gard, along with a very welcome bench.

I think I was sitting on the bench.

At this ancient monument we were definitely back among the modern world now.  We walked past a large group of French walkers seated on the ground eating lunch.

There were folks down on the river bank lazing and lunching, kayakers in the river and on the beach.

My first few views of this beautiful monument after a two year absence made me tear up a little.  It was constructed some 2,000 years ago, by men who clearly knew what they were about.  It has remained intact and with us today.  There is beauty and elegance and grace in the way the arches diminish in size and increase in numbers from the first course to the third.

Funny thing as we approached the causeway to cross from the left bank to the right bank, a large man (whose friendliness reminded me of my brother Richard) spoke to us in English.  He was funny and bantering and spoke English very well.  And he is Belgian, from Namur.  We was with another man (brothers?) and two women, one of whom was filming us, and a small boy about the age of my grandsons (who are just five this autumn).  The youngster didn't want to be photographed, but I got the two guys to oblige with good humor.

The right bank has a quite nice restaurant beneath the plane trees (unless you order pizza with capers as my son did two years ago).  But we were too hungry for waiter-service.  We bought premade sandwiches and cold sodas, enjoyed our lunch beneath other plane trees.  I would like to make it known that it was here that I would deposit my 12-year-old, cracked, and no-longer-waterproof boots into the nearest "poubelle".

Boots that had served me well in many places on the towpath, the AT, and various trails in Scotland ended their useful life in a French trash can.

Pat wasn'd interested in getting her feet wet in the Gardon River, so she went off to see the view from on high while Barb and I went wading in the river. It's really easier to wade wearing Teva sandals, which I did. And wished at the same time that I could have donned by swimsuit and totally immersed myself.

As it was, I walked around close to shore, not eager to hike in wet hiking pants.  Lots of people were there, swimming, wading, kayaking, and watering their doggies.

We knew that we were well away from the route of  Enlightened Traveller's notes, and decided to visit the Visitor Information Desk to seek help in regaining our route.  No luck there, but we did run into two other C & O Canallers, Bill and Chris.  We planned to meet that night for dinner in Nimes as our hotels are not far apart..

Meanwhile we had to finish the hike.  Pat has some very good hiking instincts; I shall remember always to trust those.  She found a way back to either the GR without undue climbing; the ground was fairly level.  To my disbelief and amazement, we followed remnants of the ancient aqueduct for several kilometers.

What an unexpected thrill for me. I know, who cares about a bunch of old stone arches.  But the thought that they are still there, haven't been "recycled" into farmhouses or barns was striking.

Eventually after crossing a highway and back into the trees, we reached the town called "Vers Pont du Gard", where we were to meet the taxi at 17:15 hours.  Coming out of the woods, just about the first thing we passed was the medieval Lavoir, where women had washed clothing for centuries. Thierry was to meet us at a bar in the place d'Horloge, and he was right on time.  We drove back to Collias to pick up our luggage, then the long ride to Nimes and the Acanthe Hotel.  Hotel in a central location,inexpensive, very clean but slightly worn; but the manager - Eric - made up for it.  Plus there was time for a shower and short nap.

Bill and Chris were there at 19:45 sharp, and race-walked us to a nice place cross from their hotel.  The hostess was a large older woman with very little English but a great attitude and we had a decent 3-course, fixed-price meal.  Not one to linger over a meal when one is bone tired, we hurried back to the hotel for a fitful night.  This was the end of a hiking trip that I'd planned for months, and that I had hoped beyond hope would be a good one.  I thought it was grand, and I hope that my friends agree.

Southwest France - to Pont St-Nicolas

The second day's walk began with a very hurried breakfast - Elisabeth doesn't serve it til 9:00 and the taxi was due at 9:30.

We are about to break our fast quickly, so as not to keep the taxi waiting.

Cannot keep waiting the taxi driver who took us to the "hameau" of Russan (a little hamlet, not even a village).  Dropped us off at the town square and delivered our suitcases to our home for the night. This day began with a steep hike up and out of the town and looking down at the Russan Bridge far far below. Oddly, there's water upstream of the bridge, but none downstream.  Apparently during dry spells, there's little water to feed the streams, and the river recedes underground.

The Russan Bridge and the disappearing Gardon River.

This day we walked and walked and walked, sometimes seeing the river below, sometimes the cliffs beneath our feet, and many times glimpsing the cliffs across the gorge. This is pretty dramatic country. The cliffs are quite high, and the landscape is what is called garrigue.

Typical of the Garrigue?  I think so, from what little I could understand.

I don't pretend to understand that word, but the trees are quite small (an oak tree had tiny leaves no bigger than my thumb).  Many of the shrubs have fairly tough and think leaves - kind of like thornless holly leaves.  In some places it was very stark, in others there were grasses, but in many places the garrigue predominated. The trail mostly followed one of the Grand Randonees (well-marked foot trails); this was the GR6 and GR63, with occasional forays along a Petit Randonee.  The GRs are marked by a white stripe above a red stripe, with the PR having a yellow stripe beneath the first two.

Easy to spot the waymarks down low on this scruffy little tree - typical of what we saw in the garrigue.

Cleverly, if the trail turned left, the bars would be underscored by an upsidedown L-shaped arrow pointing left; and vice versa if the trail turned right.  And best of all, if there was a junction with an unwanted or disused trail, the colors crossed in an X shape.

Enlightened Traveller had provided us with very good maps and summaries of each day's twists and turns. We learned to follow carefully the company's notes.  One particular viewpoint was noted in the area, high above a great meander in the waterless river.

This reminded us of a series of meanders on the Potomac River called the PawPaw Bends. 

 When we arrived at this viewpoint, we were not alone - a local man and his lovely Australian Shepherd dog were there. While we ate our lunch, doggie knew what was going on and visited each of us in turn, looking for a hand-out. She was also smart enough to lie down in our shadows, shielded from the sun's heat.

She's a beautiful, friendly but well behaved Australian Shepherd.

A short distance along we were passed by a hunter and his bird-dog.  Seems that bird hunting season had begun.  He wore an yellow cap and his dog an orange collar.

His English was even worse than my Frence.

The worst hiking ever for me had to have been the last kilometer or two before we reached the Pont St-Nicolas.  We were hiking along the high ridge above the gorge (not comfortable for one who doesn't like heights), and the footing is what Enlightened Traveller described as "classic denuded limestone causeway". We called it the swiss cheese rocks.

Take those rocks Pat is sitting on and imagine a long trail carved into it, with holes big enough to snare a toe or a heel. Walking on this stuff was slow, scary, and always with eyes alertly examining the trail.

The best part - rather, the only good part - of this section is the periodic sighting of the bridge in the distance. It was build in mid-13th century with a series of medieval arches.  Before it was built, crossing the Gardon in the rainy season required a long detour to the Pont du Gard but, according to our notes, crossing that over the highest tier was too narrow for mules. This day if there was water in the river, it was hidden by the trees on the right bank.

Actually, we drove across the bridge after our final walk.  We learned then that the great flood of September 2002 had washed out this bridge.  It is so important to transportation that it was quickly and exactly rebuilt.

The hike's end was anticlimactic - - we never got near to the bridge, never crossed it during any of our several days hikes.

The end of this day's hike took us out of the woods and along a local road to a crossroads where we were instructed to phone the owner of the gite for a ride.  But the phone had not been tested up to then for outgoing calls, and great frustration with the instructions was suffered.  Meanwhile, all we could do was sit in the hot sun and hope for relief.  Which came in the form of hiking couple returning to the parked car near to us.  I tried in broken French to explain that we could not call our host and needed some assistance.  What I hoped for was for him to make the phone call.  Instead he offered to drive us to Russan. Of course, we accepted.  Someone showed him the name of our destination; he saw it on a sign at the edge of town and drove us to the gate!!  What a good samaritan.  And we'll never know who he was.

The host is Marc, his wife is Isabelle, and the gite is called Gite des Figouriers, or the Gite of the fig tree owners.  Inside the courtyard is a huge big fig tree.  Made me wish Joe could have seen it.

The house is much larger than what this photo shows.  The rooms were above the two doors seen here, kind of a suite connected by a comfortable bathroom.

Our rooms were pretty comfortable, the dinner was very down-home:  melon with ham, great hot lasagna, and a fruit cup of figs and white peaches, all washed down with Rose wine - which may be a speciality of the region.

Our first course, with wine, of course.

Dessert was white peaches and figs.  I was too hungry to bother photographing the lasagna.

And the dinner was served to us by the owner's daughter, probably about 17 or 18. Maybe she's breaking into the business or maybe she needed to practice her English language skills, or maybe both.  She was very sweet.

This was such a quiet place.  Had there not been a bright light in the courtyard outside my window I'd have left the window open all night in hopes of seeing many stars.