Day 46 Wednesday 2nd July 2008

A rest day and the sun continues to shine from a cloudless sky. We have walked down to the town to visit the market. We bought some fruit and had a good look around. On the way back we shopped in LJR supermarket for some food.

After lunch and a siesta we drove through the Alpilles to have a look at Le Chateau des Baux de Provence. It was quite busy and all the parking looked to be paid for and we continued on to look for a Roman aqueduct shown on the map. It was quite amazing. There was quite a long stretch of stone arched aqueduct, which was also a double aqueduct – 2 channels running in parallel. The 2 channels were each on a separate set of arches. Some were collapsed but a lot were not. The amazing point about it is that the aqueduct was for water for power, not for drinking. The aqueduct ran straight across the modern road and ended at an escarpment. The one channel went through a high rock ridge – the Romans had carved out a channel about 10 feet deep and 3 feet wide through the rock. The second channel did a right angle turn to the right and ran along the ridge and disappeared into undergrowth.

Another British couple who were there showed me a book about Roman sites in southwest France that indicated this site was a large water mill complex built on the side of the hill and fed by the aqueduct. After photos and water, we returned by a different route to St Remy.

After dinner we drove out to Les Baux de Provence to walk around the village. Parking was free after 8.00pm. It was a steep walk up to the village and the streets were narrow. It is now very much a tourist village with shops and bars to match. The chateau covers a large area but is much ruined. We did not go in the chateau as it was closed.

The Alpilles gave rise to the aluminium industry in that the aluminium ore that is used for its extraction, Bauxite, was fist discovered in this region and ore was extracted for much of the early 20th century. We could find no mention of this in any of the descriptions of the area, nor could we see any industrial remains. However, we have not seen all the Alpilles area and so may have missed it. The Alpilles are quite amazing – quite jagged and rocky in many places and they rise out of the surrounding plains quite suddenly. We could see them easily against the sky from the garden of the house we rented.

Start Mileage  15145		Finish  15182	Miles Travelled = 37
								Total miles = 3697