Day 98. Avignon. Nov 12 2001.

The Day of Bridges.

The morning dawned blue and still, the rain clouds drained, the Mistral exhausted. We woke reluctantly and dressed even more so. We rescued our bikes from the dank garage in which they had rested from the past few days and loaded up.

The ride down the hill from the Auberge was a slick glide of effortless descent that saw us to the door of the nearest market, the last effortless moment of the day. We gathered our food and ate breakfast in the Jardin De La Fountain. Children on a field day crowded the beautiful lanes of plants and groaned as they were made to run laps around the 18th century fountain. If there is a better way to make children hate history I can't imagine it.

We left Nimes down a long broad avenue, the sides lined with trees, the centre occupied by a lively market selling everything from used clothing to amusement park rides. There was an elegant pyramid erected in the central park, flanked by two stone men holding stone rifles eroded with age, a monument to the martyrs of the French resistance, gleaming bright and cold in the November morning. Behind it, rising high on a pedestal of glory that threatened to reignite old diatribes was “La Taureau,” a proud statue of a defiant bull raising his head and horns to the sky. The pamphlet for the town of Nimes regally declared the Bull to be the true king of France. Based on the way the French treat their kings…

But no, I expressed myself on this subject yesterday and the day before.

We cycled out of Nimes and into a blasted hell of jagged rocks, rising hills and wind. A hurricane of air swept over us, around us, through us, making every inch of land a twisted epic of battling muscles and raging elements. The rocks here were pure white that leered skeletally from open cliff faces and roadside verges. A bare and stark castle rises to our left, an extension of the pale earth. We slowly inch up the curving roadside and somehow, impossibly, find ourselves looking down a long hill into a deep valley. Surely we cannot have climbed so high? But we look forward to the joy of descent, the unfettered rolling of wheels down a long gentle slope. We are disappointed. The wind has become so strong that we have to fight our way downhill, peddling like mad to gain even a modicum of momentum, which is stolen away by gusts of wind even as we struggle.

I begin to get angry; our one method of relaxing while biking has been stolen from us. But then the valley closes in around us, the trees shelter us from the worst of the wind and a cathedral silence begins to descend. Something awesome approaches. The bridge is visible only as arches through the trees at first, a span here, cut off by an overhanging branch and a cluster of leaves. Another span over there, impossibly distant, too far for them to belong to the same structure. The leaves and trees thin slowly, revealing span after span, arch after arch until with a sudden shock of exposure it appears in its entirety.

The Pont Du Gard.

52 arches of delicate filigree spanning the Gardon Valley. 50 400 tons of rock. A monumental construction of astonishing beauty. Built around 50AD during the reign of the emperor Claudius, the Pont du Gard aqueduct was built to supplement the flow of Nimes' holy spring with 400 liters of water a second. It was never meant to be beautiful, but it is.

Each span is impossibly wide. The whole structure unbelievably high. You cannot believe that it is older than the oldest government still in existence, older than almost any building you can find. It seems so delicate that the slightest push will send it tumbling into the valley below. We climb the steps that lead under the first set of aches. There is a solemnity standing beneath the bridge, as though you stand under a grand religious edifice. We climb to the second span and follow the footbridge across.

We follow the rocky hillside upwards to the arches that led to the water regulators. All are gone now, evidenced only by deep cavities in the dirt. We descend and cross back after exploring the far bank for awhile. There is an olive tree planted near the aqueduct that began life in 908 and was brought from Spain. It seems impossibly ancient and yet it is 850 years younger than the bridge.

We climb the other side of the bridge to the topmost arcade, high above the valley floor.

The aqueduct is locked off, fear of tourists preventing easy access but you can stand in the depths through which the water coursed and you can see the stone lids that prevented evaporation.

Behind us is a tunnel through the mountainside, dug in 1863 as the beginning of an attempt to return the aqueduct to working order. The Roman aqueduct curves around the mountain to the left. We cut through the tunnel and rejoined the watercourse on the other side, its passages filled with dirt now. We come unexpectedly upon the Pont de Valmala. One of the Pont Du Garde’s forgotten lesser brothers.

The aqueduct continues on, lost now beneath dirt and the roots of trees young by its standards, all the way to Nimes.

There is something about the faint ruins peering through the dirt that seems to lure you on, some ghostly liquid quality of water long vanished that entreats you to follow the course. With difficulty we resist and return to the valley of Gardon river. The aqueduct is difficult to leave. It is amazing in its scale, in its age, everything about it. We lunch in its shadow, hardly able to pull our eyes from it.

We must go and we tear ourselves away with effort. The Pont Du Gard recedes into the foliage once more, to rest majestically long after I, and this journal, fall into the unremembered dust of history.

The going is harder now, as if the bridge is drawing us back. We fight our way into the Mistral and up the hills that have become our burden. We are forced to climb, a long steep slope filled with angry drivers who were less than pleased to share the road. The climb went on forever, the mistral wind pushing us back with every advance and it does not relent even after we pass the hills crest and begin to descend. A long descent into Avignon cutting through cliffs and racing down a long bridge with a speed that makes our knuckles clench white.

We cross the Rhone into the city. One bridge of Avignon.

The Palace of the Popes becomes visible as a misshapen grey lump against the horizon, a glittering Mary looking down in gentle benediction. Then we are forced across the Rhone again to the flat shifting soil of the Isle de la Barthelasse. 2 bridges of Avignon.

Our campground is large, almost entirely abandoned. Moss grows in place of grass. The trees bend and dance beneath a wind that we hardly feel. The Pont De St. Benezet shattered by times and tides is clearly visible from the entrance. 3 bridges of Avignon. The bridge of Avignon.

We are too tired and too cold to dance. Instead we hurl ourselves into the tent sleep.

Next Entry: Day 99. Avignon
Previous Entry: Day 97. Nimes

Day 96. Nimes. Nov 10 2001.

The Day Of Bitter Winds.

A day of excitement, beauty and brutality so great it has shaken our faith in humanity.

The deathly winds of the Mistral clutched Nimes in icy talons, tearing at branches and shutters until the whole hillside howled in protest. We retraced our journey into the city slowly and explored the Jardin De La Fountaine with excited awe. The god Nemausus had raised a bubbling spring here and the Egyptian veterans of the Battle of Actium found welcome refuge beside his cool waters. The gardens were built over a series of canals that channeled water to the city, deep watery grooves in the earth.

Behind rose a veritable mountain of stairs topped by infinite greenery that hid the sloping hill from sight.

 
An ancient temple's ruins rose in a shadowed niche, crumbling ruins to an unknown god trapping the crescent moon of the morning between decaying stones.

We climbed the stairs to the shelter of trees and the howling of wind dropped to a quiet susurration of leaves, the sun beat down with no wind to cool it. We climbed crumbled stones paths until we slipped from the shadow of trees to the shadow of Nimes Great Tower. The tower of Roman Nimes rose from the highest of seven hills, a warning to would be conquerors and a beacon marking the gushing waters below. The tower rose 30 meters above us on the top of the hill, a white shard of antiquity gleaming almost painfully in the sun.

We climbed it’s two thousand and sixteen year old interior and looked out on a view that spanned all of Nimes and the country around it, gasping for breath in the heights. The towers innards were gone and our rarefied perch rested on a stairway built after an obscure Frenchman gutted the interior searching for a treasure prophesied by Nostradamus.

We returned to earth and the pleasure of the garden, walking a double spiral of labyrinthine hedges in delight. We hurried to the coliseum that we had seen the night before and we admired its grandiose arches the bespoke ancient power. But it was closed today for the Corrida and we bought tickets, excitedly eager to see a cultural event renown for its beauty. Then we retraced our steps through the town, back into the mazelike streets of the city’s market district, everything stamped with the city emblem of crocodile and palm tree.

Then we found the temple. The Square House of Nimes, One thousand nine hundred and ninety eight years old. Perfect Corinthian columns supporting ancient roofing tiles raised to cover a sanctuary of the Imperial Cult. The temple was magnificent. The wind whistled between the fluted columns and bit deep beneath our layers of clothes.

Our final sightseeing stop was the Castellum, the distribution tank of the in rushing water from the ancient aqueduct which ran over the Pont Du Gard. The pipes sending water throughout the ancient Roman city were still visible and although it was mostly a pit in the ground it was still a practical working part of Roman life. That more than temple or coliseum or ancient towers brought the dead to life for me.

We returned through the tiny medieval streets, a thousand colorful storefronts opening their doors and spilling their wares out into the cobblestone paths invitingly. The wind howled overhead, angry at the protection afforded mortals by the canyons of stone. We gave in to the cold and the invitations of the street merchants and bought gloves for our frozen hands. Then to the Arena for the Corrida.

It was exciting to line up with the rest and know that the arena was being used for something approaching it’s original purpose. Our hearts raced as the adrenaline surge of the crowd rushed over us. People waved happily to one another while the band played and vendors danced along the ancient roman railings, tossing peanuts and chips to the crowd and deftly catching coins tossed their way. The intensity built as we waited until the stones seemed to throb with impatience. The doors opened and the players walked to the sands. There were the matadors, their assistants, men in armor on armored and blindfolded horses and wagoneers with heavy horses and chains. They filed off the sand and took refuge in the wings and waited for the bullfight to begin. The music blared and it started.

The spectacle began in beauty. The expanse of sands, a long blast of familiar music and the powerful fury of the charging bull taking to the arena. The swirling flowers of color made as the man danced around the deadly thrust of horn or the heavily muscled bulk of head and neck. The soft, indrawn whisper of Ole as the beast surged majestically around the man.

Then the slaughter began.

The poetry of the corrida tells of the meeting between man and beast. It tells of the struggle between mind and muscle and the beauty of the dance of death.

The poetry of the corrida is a diseased lie told by those who gorge themselves on feasts of blood and agony. The songs that are sung say nothing of torture and torment, of enraging an innocent beast over and over again, so he is driven to a froth of exhaustion, nothing of spears thrust into writhing muscles and tender flesh to destroy the strength of a bewildered animal. Those who praise the arena and the masculine strength of the matador speak only softly of the darts flung into the back of a beast who cannot understand what is happening. Barbs of pain to snap a mind already at its bestial limits with terror, barbs that drain strength in spasms of frantic energy as the beast tries to free itself from agony. And nothing is ever said of a beast too exhausted to move, to stand, collapsing in a pathetic mewling heap on sand stained with its own blood, while the savage crowd boos the poor sport. Not even in whispers is it told of the shame of desperate matadors, trying to drag their ravaged prey to its feet with angry tugs on it’s tail, until they are almost dragging the beast around the sands by its ass. Advocates of blood sport don’t discuss the confusion and terror on the face of a dying bull, understandable even across the gap of species that separates us. They speak not of torment and torture. They say the matador faces a dying bull alone, ignoring the men who distract it with fluttering capes because the matador is too frightened of the savage mess of blood and agony he has created. They don't speak of a beast so wounded that it is vomiting, pissing and shitting blood across the sand. And no one ever, ever, talks about the bull falling to its side and a terrified little man thrusting a dagger deep into its skull and pureeing its brains while it spasms across the sand in it’s death throes.

We rose and left after the second bull, unable to bear the shame of being human any longer. My awe for the beauty of the stadium dissolving in a rush of disgust and humiliation that my species should be the perpetrators of such sadistic crimes. That crowds should cheer it!

A guard sneered as we left and proclaimed that “There is always one that can’t take it.” He cannot know that my heart pleads that such should be the case, that somewhere people know shame.

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