Veronique in Rians was ever-helpful. Continental breakfast ($5); while the coffee brews she walks up to the boulangerie to get a fresh baguette for me. She urges various stops on me - "Aix is beautiful, Avignon is marvellous, you must stop at Jusque on the way to Saint-Remy". So I do, on the road before 9, but I think Rians was just as interesting, though not as old.
Veronique and her friend run the 4 Chemins as a base for guided tours on bicycle, on bike paths mostly, only 40 km per day. Her friend is in Italy at present guiding a group around Tuscany. The house is ancient, but they've done a great modernisation that still shows the old structure
A short riding day; pleasant roads but more traffic (I guess as we approach the coast).
Once again, lots of agriculture everywhere the land allows it, right up to the edges of the village houses, and there's lots of flat land in the river valleys.
Maussane-les-Alpilles is the first village I've been through that is clearly full of tourists rather than locals. Market stalls, etc, too. This area has a great concentration of Roman remains. The Via Aurelia used to run from Rome to Arles 2000 years ago; they still remember it round here.
I divert from my destination (Glanum) as I'm so early and make for Les Moulins de Barbegal. And they're everything I expected.
The aqueducts that fed Arles in the 3rd Century also fed the greatest piece of technology Europe was to see for the next 1000 years. On the side of a limestone ridge near the village of Barbegal are the remains of a twinned set of water-mills, 16 in all, capable of grinding 4 tonnes of flour a day (Scientific American, 1990).
Two aqueducts from the Alpilles (small limestone range) fed them, with more or less of the water diverted to Arles as needs varied over the centuries. I took a hundred photos (I won't show you all of them), but at times I was the only visitor.
There's not much structure to see now, but this mill complex was only uncovered in the 1940's, though the aqueducts cut across a local road. The aqueducts and mills are entirely unprotected; anyone can just walk in and help themselves to photos, or bricks. But the sad thing I noticed was how the site is being destroyed by vegetation, trees growing from between the limestone slabs, etc. Photos taken when it was first uncovered show a much clearer structure, with less erosion around the walls; maybe it should be reburied until they have enough money to preserve it.
After Barbegal, it was on to the day's destination, the Roman town of Glanum, which was on the Via Domitia. I expected a Roman ruin, but what I found was an archeological site where excavations since 1921 have uncovered a story going back to the Gaulish town of the 7th century BC and going through various stages as the town planners, Greek in the 2nd century and Roman after the conquest in 120 BC, changed the uses of the town. It began as a barrier blocking access through a pass, and incorporating a "sacred spring" but became an administrative centre with a massive government building adjacent to a forum of about 1 acre, shops, temples to the god/emperor, etc until being abandoned after invasions mid-3rd century AD.
The best thing the archeo's have done is in the middle of the forum.
A structure that looks like a well reveals several of the lower levels they have uncovered, with quite different building structures, four in all having been recovered.
So the Roman town has a story too, and it has changed over time, but I see continuity between the house and street designs in Glanum and in Le Fugeret (and Rians and Jusque). The recent bricks are smaller and the designs more fluid, but the clustering, the narrow streets and narrow paths between the multi-story houses, the town plazas, etc are there in both.
PS great weather again today, 20-23.
No comments:
Post a Comment