That Van is WAY Too Close! (Would You Say Something?)

That Van is WAY Too Close! (Would You Say Something?)

Hello folks welcome back to Mike and Trisha out AB we’re currently touring France while at the same time we’re putting our new camper van through its Paces to find out what works well for us and what doesn’t in this episode there’s a definite Bridge theme going on but is

This one a bridge too far for Trisha it’s been another moving on day today and we’ve just arrived at our next camping car park this one’s a little village called rulan and it’s just beside Aon to the west of Aenon I’m just about to head into the car part now so I’ll give you a little walk

Around right here we go it’s a circular route I’m walking against the way of traffic so at least I’ll see them coming and it’s quite a small one there’s space here for 31 vehicles and this one is pretty full actually quite close to capacity I think

There may be one or two spaces left but really not much else and you can see everyone is parked quite closely together that’s the way these places tend to be but if you’re staying in a village and it gives you that close proximity where you can just park the

Van and go off for a wander into the Village then I think they’re great right so I think someone has arrived and parked in between two parking Bays one of which is ours you’re not really supposed to do that cuz the parking bays are all quite clearly

Marked out but someone has managed to squeeze in between our van and another van did you see that somebody’s parked beside us and they shouldn’t be parked beside us yeah they’ve squeezed in between us and the other van yeah I mean these These are huge spaces but did you

Look at the board to see the layout yeah I have and is this not a space that’s not a space no the spaces are the spaces are quite clearly marked and so through there through the window that van through there shouldn’t be there is it bothering you it’s not my

Side to the door you know I think it’s really bothering us for us no I think it would be more bothered if I and there if the door was opening that way yeah because our Do’s here there you go k we’ve had a couple of chairs and a table out and there’s a

Quite a nice view over the river down there so we’ve just been enjoying it out here for the last 10 or 15 minutes as soon as we arrived they came out and that’s the other van there that’s pulled up it’s not really bothering us so I’m not going to say

Anything after a quick shower I decided it’s time to tackle this overgrown beard of mine there’s a mirror on the back side of this brush and that helps me I thought we could walk across the bridge and just have a walk into the old part of the Town yeah that’d be nice there’s

A sign outside showing us where to go we need to cross leardon via the new bridge it’s known locally as Leon n that’s the new bridge because this is the third bridge to have been built here in the last 200 years The river Gardon is 127 km long and has experienced severe flooding in its history most recently 20023 and has since had a lot of investment in flood Management Systems some remnants of the previous Bridge are on display it was another syst suspension bridge built in 1935 but it was seriously undermined by

Subsidence by a flood in 1958 and was demolished in 1995 the board shows a picture of what it looked like in its day the oldest bridge to have crossed leardon is just one minute walk along the River Bank it dates to 1830 and was one of the oldest suspens ient bridges in

France work of the sigwin brothers its remains are still impressive to see to this day and they’re protected as National Historic monuments we’re not sure what the wi buildings on either side would have been for maybe for collecting tools or for security guards to stop certain people from Crossing

After we’ve had a good look around the old bridge we decide it’s time to head off into the old Town after wandering through the quiet streets of the Old Town the walk takes us back down to lardon these walls are really really tall do you think that’s flood defense I think it must be actually although it’s hard to believe because the river is a way way down

There and these walls have got to be what would you what would you say 20 to 30 ft yeah high and there’s these poles that have got markings on them as well ah the poles down there yeah how we look at them I think these are actually in meters and

This starts here at 21 there’s an earlier bit down there where it goes from 1 to 20 this is 21 and it goes all the way up to 26 do you really think the river could go all the way up there that was a really nice we walk and

While we were out Trisha got me this beer I’m going to give it a try now Duff beer and apparently it’s Homer Simpson’s favorite so this good enough for him I’m sure it’ll be good enough for me give a try there we go Homer would be jealous quite a light

Color and quite fo me cheers don’t it’s the next day and it’s a beautiful sunny day and we’ve moved on but not very far it’s only about 3 minutes down the road we’re in the process of moving on but we’ve stopped off here it’s a place called Pont

Duart and this is really the main reason that we actually stopped here in the first place because there’s something here that we really really want to see and we have seen a Viaduct already on this trip you might have seen that one well this one it’s another Viaduct

But this is something special we’re going to see this now well we’ve got a pretty big entrance area to this which suggests to me this is going to be good little sneak peek there of what we’re going to see on this board it’s ran and it’s a Viaduct and

Apparently it’s the best preserved example of this anywhere there’s a nice little shot on the back of that look there’s a ticket office here we weren’t really expecting to pay because we’ve paid €9 to get in for the parking and we’ve just actually find out that you have to pay a bit more

Get a ticket if you want to get the audio tour or if you want to go into the museum we’re not we’re just going to see the viaduct itself so we don’t need any more tickets we head off towards the p duard and it’s a pretty imposing site over

Lardon and definitely trumps the previous bridges that we’ve seen I’ve called this a Viaduct but actually the Pug guard is an ancient Roman aqueduct Bridge built in the first century ad to carry water over 50 km that’s 31 Mi to Roman colonies it crosses the river

Garton near the town of vont in southern France the bridge has three tiers of archers made from Shelly Limestone and stands 50 m High the aqueduct would have carried around 40,000 cubic M of water a day to the fountains baths and homes of Romans living in what is today the city of

Neim the p duard is the tallest of all Roman aqueduct Bridges as well as one of the best preserved it was added to unesco’s LIF of world heritage sites in 1985 I’d like to get to the top but for Trisha it’s proved to be a bridge too

Far and I head up on my own I’m nearly at the top now and get a fantastic view through the trees I’ve reached the top and there’s a gate to stop people walking over but there’s a peep Hall where you can see the channel That would have carried the

Water before I head back I enjoyed my last chance to take in the views of this remarkable feet of engineering that the Romans created almost 2,000 years ago what a day out this has been it’s beautiful isn’t it it’s been fantastic just the P yeah I feel so lucky that

We’ve actually experienced this we’re just going to give Kira some ball play and we spot a lunch and then we’re moving on to our next site yep so we’ll see you on the next one folks bye Ta I

We’re staying at a Camping Car Park at Remoulins in the south of France. A motorhome squeezes in beside us but we don’t let that get to us and instead set out to explore the old town and the historic bridges, but then we come to one that may be a bit much for Tricia to get to the top.