What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, there's the Pont du Gard

The story behind the Pont du Gard could easily have been a 21st Century one. It was a town planning drama which started in 45 BC when the Romans took over much of northwest Europe to create the colony, Gaul.

Within a hundred years, Nîmes had become a major centre in this new empire, a boomtown of 20,000 people. By 40 AD, the economic miracle was grinding to standstill for lack of water. The new affluence brought with it all the up market toys and luxuries of a consumer society. Unlike the locals, the Romans had baths.

Villas were no longer homes. They were executive homes with mains water. Soon, every square would have its fountain. Then new businesses and burgeoning administration attracted still more people from the countryside.

The local springs couldn’t cope with demand anymore. In today’s language, Nîmes was running out of bandwidth.

The nearest water supplies with sufficient capacity were in the mountains at Eure, some 20 kilometres to the north as the crow flies. But water follows the lie of the land. Avoiding the area’s twisted limestone hills and gorges would increase this distance to nearer 50.

At the heart of this civil engineering nightmare was a question - how to cross the valley of the River Gardon?

The scale of this enterprise is staggering even by today’s standards. Roman engineers designed a 50 km aqueduct which falls just 12 metres from beginning to end , allowing a smooth gravity-fed flow.

Local limestone was used to line the channels. Being porous, the stones were coated with mortar and lime to reduce water infiltration, parasites and root invasion.

Wherever there was a geological or topological obstacle the underground channel was progressively brought to the surface and continued on a support wall, arcades or over a bridge. To cross the River Gardon, they built the Pont du Gard.

At 49 metres, this is the highest aqueduct bridge ever built by the Romans and is remarkably well conserved.
It has 3 rows of arches: 6 on the bottom row, 11 on the second level and 47 on the top row. This is dry stone walling on a grand scale because the stones are precision cut to fit together – there’s no mortar.

Many pieces weigh over two tons and one wonders how they were lifted into position. The monument still bears traces of the project management of the work: numbering of stones, support points for scaffolding and lifting devices.

UNESCO declared the Pont du Gard a World Heritage Site in 1985. The site is now superbly serviced with multiple car parks, restaurants, museum, interpretive centre. There is excellent access for the disabled to the entire site. There’s also a network of footpaths and cycling trails so that visitors can enjoy not only the monument but also the surrounding landscape.

The 2000 year old pillars still bear the holes which held Roman scaffolding

Open all year round, the site is signposted from the A9 autoroute, exit 23 between Nîmes and Avignon.

Places to go: St Martin du Canigou in Pyrénées Orientales, Languedoc Roussillon

It’s an easy 40 minute walk up the public footpath which climbs 300 meters through a limestone gorge but it’s worth it. Clinging to the side of Mount Canigou, the abbey of St Martin du Canigou perches high above a ravine with breathtaking views over the eastern Pyrenees.

First built as a monastery around the year 1000 for Guifred the Second, count of Cerdagne and Conflent, the site was home to an order of Benedictine monks until 1786. It was abandoned and left empty for the next 120 years. 

Then the Bishop of Perpignan and Elne bought the ruins in 1902. The abbey was restored and extended twice during the twentieth century. 
 
Since 1988 it is home to the Catholic Community of the Beatitudes, a fundamentalist group within the Catholic Church. They’ve been likened to a cult, but they receive visitors, both tourists and also the more serious variety in search of enlightenment and repose.

The abbey itself is closed to visitors in January but offers guided tours throughout the rest of the year, except on Mondays. The situation, complete with a dramatic public viewing point is spectacular anytime.

The short 1.6 km walk to reach it starts from the village of Casteil, 3 km south from the picturesque spa town of Vernet les Bains. For those to infirm to make the climb, one of the brothers will happily descend with one of the holy fleet of Suzuki jeeps.

Not to be missed...

Photos: Martin Castellan

Irénée Cros - an ordinary Frenchman

In June 1940, the French government capitulated to advancing German forces. Defeatists amongst France’s politicians and senior commanders had overestimated Germany’s strength and underestimated their own. 

Hitler had simply bluffed them. In reality, Britain and France together were consuming his forces faster than he could replace them. Angry that France had given up the fight without being beaten, Général De Gaulle decided to continue the war from London. On June 18^th 1940 he broadcast over the BBC a legendary appeal to his compatriots to carry on the fight. 

One of them was Irénée Cros.

Trained as an architect, he found himself in Foix when France surrendered. Foix was the capital of the Pyrénéan département of Ariège. Irénée became Ariège’s resistance leader.

Of course, the Germans did their best to seal the border with Spain but it leaked like a sieve. Mountains hold no mystery for those who live amongst them. Over in Spanish Catalonia, people were involved in their own struggle against facism. Frenchmen and Spaniards alike travelled to and fro as they pleased.

With his friends, Irénée Cros led sabotage missions and directed the struggle against the occupiers. Most importantly they organised the passeurs, those who escorted refugees from Nazi persecution through the mountains. With them too went free French volunteers and allied airmen to neutral Spain from whence they would find their way to Britain to fight again another day. 

Then, on the night of 13^th December 1943, came the long-awaited hammering on the door. An informer, supposedly a friend, had denounced Irénée to the Germans. He wasn’t surprised. Traitors were a bigger threat than the enemy. That's what made the Nazis evil - that they sowed distrust, turned Frenchman against Frenchman. He'd probably expected it since the beginning.

Irénée knew what would come next – interrogation, torture and sooner or later, death. He didn’t open the door. He didn’t try to run. He calmly set about burning all the documents which might lead the Gestapo to other members of the resistance. The last page still smouldered in the grate when the Germans broke down the door.

Furious that they were seconds too late, the Gestapo executed Irénée on the spot. No interrogation. No torture. The end came quickly with a bullet in the back of the neck. All the incriminating evidence was gone. The Germans received nothing for their trouble. Even in death one ordinary Frenchman had beaten them with the power of his will.

There were many like him.

Friends and veterans remember Irénée Cros on 13th December, the anniversary of his death.

(Photo:La Dépêche du Midi)

The TGV Paris-Barcelona arrives. . . almost

A French TGV speeds across Catalonia en route for Figueras.

Photo: Martin Castellan/Sud Media Images

From 19th December 2010, the Catalan capital of Barcelona will be a step nearer to France. French high speed TGV trains from Paris will continue past Perpignan as far as Figueras in Spain.

The twice-daily service will stop at Nimes, Montpellier, Narbonne and Perpignan. Slower Spanish regional trains will take passengers on to Gerona and Barcelona, shortening the journey between the french and catalan capitals by an hour and a quarter.

Part of the EU dream of a pan-European transport network, the new link will be part of the Brussels-Barcelona high speed route. A new high-speed line snakes across Catalonia to the Barcelona suburbs. Finding a way through urban areas has proved a tougher proposition with the need to tunnel beneath existing buildings.

The French and Spanish rail networks are different gauges, preventing the French TGVs from continuing their journey on older regional Spanish tracks. Built to the European gauge, the new high speed lines will enable the TGVs to go all the way in 2012 or 2013. Reducing the Paris-Barcelona journey to 5 hours 35 minutes.

To reach Barcelona’s main Sants station, the line will pass under the new cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. Designed by the catalan architect Anton Gaudi, the cathedral, under construction since 1888, is still not finished. Despite a visit by the pope in November to consecrate the building, construction continues as tunneling machines burrow gingerly underneath.

No-one wants to be the catalan who dropped 128 years of Catalan pride into a train-shaped hole. The tunnelers will take their time and do it right. This is one job that will be finished when it’s finished, and that's that.

Spanish village devastated by morris dancing

Health officials race against time to save these Spanish villagers from the scourge of Britain

The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a level 5 pandemic alert yesterday after Spanish health officials confirmed the country’s first case of morris dancing. So far the outbreak has been contained to the remote Pyrenean village of Lesaka.

Nestling high in the mountains, the community is in a state of shock, unable to understand how such a contagious disease has arrived in this quiet corner of Navarre.

The debilitating illness, which causes uncontrolled muscle spasms most commonly observed in morris dancers, is largely unknown outside the United Kingdom.

In Britain the spread of morrisella, as it is known medically, follows the distribution of real ale. It is caused by bacteria found in a single species of hops which grows only in the county of Kent. Quite how this infection found its way to Lesaka remained a mystery until now.

The village mayor, Señor Innocente Diás, said “we are doing everything we can to reassure the population and contain the spread”. Following perhaps the example of the villagers in the Eyam in Derbyshire during the Black Death, the people of Lesaka have voluntarily quarantined themselves.

No-one is allowed in or out. “We wouldn’t want our neighbours to suffer what we have experienced during the last two days” said one by telephone. “There’s not much doubt – all the symptoms are there - the uncontrolled twitching, the urge to hit one’s neighbour with a stick, the flatulence. It is most distressing to watch. Of course, the victim, himself, is completely unaware of his illness due to delirium. His delusions are such that he firmly believes that he is entertaining people.”

“Worst of all is the noise” says Señor Diás “for some reason the disease particularly attacks musicians. Our normally talented and much admired accordionists suddenly find themselves in the grip of a compulsion. It forces them to play tuneless dirges which follow no known musical form.”

Health officials attribute the outbreak to the accidental fall of barrels of Marstons Pedigree from a truck which overturned en route for the Costa del Sol, an area much frequented by older British tourists. A local farmer, mistaking the loast load for a harmless shipment of rioja, took it home to the village. "Rioja makes us laugh and fall over; I just thought it would be fun" said the farmer, Juan Alvarez. "I had no idea that it was this dangerous stuff".

“If only the lorry had been going to a resort popular with younger visitors” said Dr EmilioTonterías , a prominent Spanish bacteriologist. “They drink lager. Nothing can live in it, but Pedigree, well it is a perfect culture medium”.

In rural Navarre, where everyone drinks the local wine, villagers have no natural immunity to the morrisella bacterium. “Our people are defenceless. It has spread like a forest fire”, said DrTonterías .

“The only villagers spared were Athletico Bilbao fans who once went to a European Cup match against Manchester United.” It is believed that they may have consumed Boddingtons, a brew from the north of England. "Boddy's", as it is called locally, is a natural antidote to the disease since it provokes spontaneous vomiting on contact with Pedigree. Boddingtons' hops are grown only on the south-facing bank of the Manchester Ship Canal and are genetically-engineered to resist invasion by southern hops, especially from Kent.

The debilitating effects of morris dancing - six months ago these men were chartered accountants - they had jobs, families...

WHO and local officials hope that the symptoms will subside over the next 24 hours, now that all the missing Pedigree has been located and destroyed.

Transhumance in the Vicdessos

About 100km south of Toulouse in southern France, the E9 European trunk route passes through Tarascon sur Ariège on its way through the Pyrenees to Barcelona in neighbouring Spain. Tarascon is a kind of frontier town astride the river Ariège and surrounded by mountains. South-east from the town the Vicdessos valley climbs for 40km or so towards the 3000 metre high summit ridge which separates the two countries.

I pass this way in June to catch up with the spring movement of horses, cattle and sheep up to the mountain pastures. Known as the "transhumance", this will leave at around seven o’clock in the morning from the « Pla de l’Isard ». In the language of the region, Catalan, “Pla” is a plain or flat open area. “Isard” is the local Pyrenean name for the chamois, a European species of mountain goat. Livestock have been mustered here for centuries. It is the last flat place that we shall see today.

The sky is the colour of lead, the mountains cloaked in cloud, and my camera is already complaining about the light. It wants its flashgun. That is not the way to natural-looking photographs on a mountain. I debate with myself whether to continue the day’s shoot or simply give up and go home.

I was born to be in the mountains and I have come a long way today so I decide to stay with the transhumance until we reach the solid cloud layer above. Then at least honour will be satisfied and I can go home.

Exactly on time, the cattle leave first preceded by a classically red-faced farmer in a Citreon van who shouts at the spectators to keep out of their way. The narrow road follows the side of a gorge with a steep drop to one side. He fears that urban visitors will not anticipate the cows’ movements and will place themselves between the animals and the abyss. All it takes is one cow with a calf that have fallen behind the others and are trying to catch them up. One jostle with a tourist and it will all be over. It has happened before and there have been injuries but, so far, no deaths.

Next follow around twenty Mérens horses, a native Pyrenean breed. Today, silhouetted against the half-light of a dawn already two hours late, these jet-black horses will not make a story either. So it is all down to the sheep. I set off in front of several hundred ewes of the local tarasconnais breed.

Contrary to popular belief, sheep are anything but stupid. They know what they are doing even if it does not make immediate sense to some humans. They stick together because they know that this confuses predators. While it is true that this lot are protected by shepherds, sheep farming has only been around for a few thousand years. That is not very long in evolutionary terms. Better safe than sorry.

The flock ebbs and flows around me as the leaders fix on some approaching patch of grass. When they turn aside to snatch this pasture on the move, others will overtake and become the next front row. The browsers will rejoin the rear of the column as it passes. This cycle continuously repeats itself like waves breaking on a beach.

The sheep need to browse continually, not just for nourishment, but also for the moisture which the grass contains and carries on its surfaces. Climbing on a June day is hot work and dehydration is a risk. A couple of vans follow the flock, ready to collect any stragglers who find it all too much. There is usually the odd geriatric ewe or a lamb born too late in the season to make the whole trip on foot this time.

I notice that some sheep are wearing eye-catching red or yellow pompoms. Obviously this must have some profound cultural or religious significance. Ever keen to understand other people's lives and cultures, I ask a shepherd to explain the meaning of this historic and traditional custom. He stares at me, wide-eyed, trying hard to keep a straight face. He says “It seemed like a good idea - today is supposed to be fun. We just wanted to make them look pretty”. He even wears a few pompoms himself.

After such a silly question, he contains himself no longer and explodes into laughter. His colleagues follow suite five milliseconds later. I am confronted by a line of hysterical shepherds. Unfortunately we are all men and so cannot walk and laugh at the same time. The human vanguard shudders to a temporary halt.

Following are hundreds of woolly females that can walk and chew grass simultaneously. They don’t stop. . .

The flock reaches the cloud base where I had promised myself that I would turn back. Most of the spectators have long since returned from whence they came. But, I am having fun with my new-found friends so I continue and a strange things begin to happen.

As we climb through the mist, the light level improves rapidly and serious photography becomes an option. Then the white of the sheep’s fleeces melds with the grey mist to ghostly atmospheric effect. Images appear one after another telling the story and I am glad I stuck with it.

Three hours after leaving the Pla, the sheep suddenly stop at around 1800 metres. I ask a shepherd what is wrong - “Cows up ahead”. We have caught up the grey gascon cattle that began the day. A hundred metres ahead, the track has narrowed to single file. The cows search diligently for a way up through the rocks.

One of the shepherds runs forward, staff in hand, to direct the bovine traffic jam. He stands high on a boulder, complete with staff and beret. What a gift for a photographer! As this oil painting comes to life before my eyes, I run forward across the rock-strewn slope, hoping that he stays there long enough to be recorded for posterity. Obligingly he does. . .

Once past this little drama, it’s a short walk to a footbridge across the river Soulcem. The final destination, open mountainside, beckons on the other bank. The transhumance is complete. A shepherd will stay with the flock throughout the summer to make sure that all is well. They’ll descend again in October.

The transhumance

Since at least the Middle Ages, farmers have been taking their livestock to summer pasture high in the Pyrenees. Summer in Spain and southern France is hot and dry. Livestock would go thirsty without water being piped or brought to them. Once eaten, pasture won’t regenerate until the autumn rains. Animals suffer in the heat and are plagued by insects which flourish in the warm climate.

Photo: Tarasconnais ewes at the Port de Salau, Ariège

Many small lowland farms can’t support enough stock all year round to remain economic. For centuries the solution has been to head for the mountains. Topping out at over 3,000 meters, the Pyrenees provide a cooler climate, a tasty mix of grasses and other plants, streams which flow all summer and . . . freedom! Getting to these high pastures, called estives, means several days’ walk for animals and farmers alike. That’s the transhumance.

Until around 100 years ago, the transhumance revolved around dairy cattle. Sheep would be taken to higher pastures which cows couldn’t reach. Farming families decamped to the estives, where up to 14 people would spend the summer communally in each one-room stone hut. They made cheese on-site. Nothing was wasted; byproducts would be used to feed pigs which had also made the ascent with the sheep and cattle.

This way of life gradually declined during the twentieth century. Any village war memorial will testify that the First World War decimated a generation of young Frenchmen. The industrialisation of agriculture, rural depopulation and modern food regulations did the rest. These days, even farm-produced cheese comes from a sterile clean room.

Photo: Leaving Massat in the Couserans

Over the last decade transhumance has made a comeback. The mountains are seen as being increasingly important in the life of the countryside. They attract skiers and green tourism, providing opportunities for economic regeneration of rural areas while primary industries like textiles decline. You can’t outsource hill walking to China.

Transhumance is an important part of rural life both economically and socially. From a green point of view it is brilliantly efficient, reducing both agriculture’s carbon footprint and its energy consumption. The only fuel used is red and comes in bottles. These days the transhumance is organised communally by associations of local countryside users.
Photo: Crossing the river before finally reaching open mountain




The numbers are impressive - in the department of Ariège alone, over 12,000 cattle, 40,000 sheep and over 1,000 horses make this annual pilgrimage. The stock is cared for by professional shepherds and cowherds, employed for the season by the associations. But everyone joins in for the transhumance itself.

It’s even becoming a tourist attraction as anyone can join in, coming just for the day or combining it with a farm holiday.

And at the end of the journey there’s one hell of a party with local produce, wine from the region all serenaded by traditional musicians. . .

Photo: In the village of Biert the party gets going with a local band including the cornemuse, a pyrenean bagpipe.