Pont du Gard, near Nimes, France

Friday 26th September 2025

We headed further south today, but not too far. About an hour’s drive from our last stop, is the Roman Aqueduct known as the “Pont du Gard”, so we decided to visit. Along the way, we passed along many quintessentially French roads, dead-straight, with beautiful trees on each side:

We booked a Camping Car stopover within 5 minutes cycle-ride from the aqueduct and made our way there.

The bridge is huge. I mean really huge, especially considering how long ago it was built (40-60 AD). It was built to carry water for 50 Km to the nearby Roman colony of Nemausus (present day Nimes). It is 48.8 metres high and at peak, carried 11 million gallons of water a day.

The lowest level has a road bridge (closed to traffic), which we crossed. You are unable to access the higher levels.

Like many stone monuments, the bridge has suffered at the hands of vandals. I think that the graffiti carved into the stone of the piers is quite old, however.

We climbed up to the highest level alongside the bridge, where we could see the massive stones used in its construction, even at the top tier. The channel is also clear, as is the tunnel which continues on from the end of the bridge to continue the water’s path.

Immediately beyond the end of the bridge, water would enter a tunnel, cut straight through the hill beyond.

A little further along beyond the tunnel, we found another, smaller aqueduct, one of many built to complete the canal. Here again, you can see the canal on the top.

On the far side of the river, we found a number of olive trees which had been transplanted from Spain, but were in fact over 1000 years old.

Of course the area is a tourist attraction, but today, it was reasonably quiet. It seems that people like to relax and use the river for swimming and canoeing as the river is slow and quite shallow.

Nearby, there are the remains of prehistoric mining which took place alongside the river.

That is it for today. So long and see-u-later.