Pont du Gard, Remoulins, France ... at night

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? Mr B asked me to organise an overnight stop somewhere in France on our way home to Spain. It was a great brief - anywhere, I mean anywhere interesting in France. Well the sky's the limit ... .

And it totally was. The sky was the limit with this leviathan of the Roman world. Feast your eyes, my friends, on the tallest aqueduct that Rome ever built.

Twilight at the Pont du Gard, Remoulins, France

Isn't it a beauty? Way up on top, where it looks like someone sewed on the top tier using blanket stitch, they used to carry the water across the valley to feed the growing Roman colony in Nîmes. Down below where you can see the wider arches they had a viaduct where people would travel across the river gorge with the Gardon river flowing merrily on its way down below.

Mr B thought that it was a pretty good choice.

We arrived in Remoulins in the early evening, and checked in with our (dog-friendly) hotel in the centre of town. Then we decided to take Maxi, the wonder dog, for a walk to stretch his paws after all that time sitting in the back of the car watching Scooby-Doo videos with Emi, who was also looking slightly goggle-eyed in the way that eight year old boys do when they've just spent eight hours watching non-stop Scooby-Doo on a small screen in the back of a fast moving car.

As we had a UNESCO world heritage site on the outskirts of town that seemed like the obvious destination to bend our steps towards. We asked the chap in the hotel reception, and he gave us one of those Gallic shrugs and told us that it would take tventy minoots to get to the bridge.

About an hour later we ambled up to the bridge, hungry and wondering how we'd ever manage to drag our weary backsides back to town without some pommes frites and a nice glass of something cold and wet.

Then we saw this:

... and forgot about the pommes frites.

We wandered around admiring it and wading into the river to get the best possible photo. And then we wondered whether or not they'd have some sort of son et lumière gig later when it got properly dark.

It got properly dark.

And the lights came on ... and I felt a bit inadequate at having come without my tripod ...

Taking photos in the pitch dark, half way across the river was a challenge. Not least because my anxious son would shout out my name every five minutes from the viewing terrace to reassure himself that I hadn't been swept away by the water. Every time I released the shutter I had to shout back reassurance that I was still very much in the land of the living, resulting in a blur as my exhalation shook the camera ever so slightly. And, with the lights dancing in waves of colour, it took very little to blur the image.

And then we climbed the bridge and walked across it with the lights playing around us. It was a moonless night, which made the colours all the more dramatic given the contrast they made with the inky blackness of the sky.

Emi's new word for the evening was serendipitous: adjective: occurring or discovered by chance in a happy and beneficial way. Our discovery of the night-time spectacle had been a truly serendipitous gift of fate, and our good luck didn't end there. You see, by now, we had really worked up an appetite and the idea of a nice steak-frites was weighing very heavily on our thoughts.

Just as the happy holiday mood was in danger of being deflated by hunger pangs we saw this place, Les Terrasses, on the rive droite of the Gardon.

Now we would normally run a mile from the only restaurant operating at a tourist hotspot like this, dismissing it as something that only survived because it held the foreign tourists to ransom being the only pit-stop in town. But we were very hungry and it was a long walk back into town (merci, Monsieur le concierge for your advice on that point). So we decided to give it a go. And it was really great. They offered us a bowl of water for le petit chien, which immediately earned them multiple brownie points chez moi, and with very little fuss and fanfare they delivered succulent rib eye steaks in a pepper sauce with pommes frites and some lovely ice-cold glasses of the local beer. Fantastique! Formidable!

And the best bit was the magnificent view from the terrace where we sat feasting in the balmy night air:

Apologies, but the glass of the fine local beer did very little to steady my hand on the camera ... .

So, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Remoulins and you'd like to go for a stroll, head for the rive droite, the right bank of the Gardon, walking out of town. It's much closer than the left bank, and don't be afraid to try, Les Terrasses, the terrace restaurant when you get there. It's not half bad!

Anyway, drop by tomorrow, and I'll show you what this baby looks like in daylight.

À demain,


Bonny x

Or if you're in the area why not check out Perpignan?

Or the insect kingdom of Micropolis?

Micropolis, St Léons, Aveyron, France

Now gird your loins if you're not a fan of the legions of creepy crawlies that we share our planet with ... . Micropolis may not be entirely your cup of tea, but, if you're in the area, it's well-worth a look.

It was Mr B's idea to stop off at Micropolis, the city of the insects, to break our journey back to England from Spain. It's just 15 minutes from the famous Millau Bridge, about which I've enthused here: Millau Bridge.

I wasn't totally sold on the idea, but, as I could see that he was really enthusiastic, I went along with it.

Emi will love it, he said.

On being consulted Emi duly confirmed that it did indeed sound like something that would be right up his street. Creepy-crawlies or mini beasts, as they've been encouraged to call them at school, will always be a hit with an eight year-old boy.

The centre has an indoor gallery and an outdoor trail. So, even if it's raining, it's still a viable venue for an afternoon out.

It sits on the shoulder of a hill, looking down on the historical village of St. Léons. As you can see the setting is spectacular.

The roofed gallery feels like something the insects have designed for themselves. As you walk along the pathway to enter the building the wind whistles around the structure producing a humming noise that sounds like millions of massed bugs swarming in the afternoon sun.

And now, with the benefit of having been there, I must confess that it's a pretty cool place. Insects, spiders and bugs may not be your thing; they certainly weren't top of my hit parade, but, as they're at pains to point out in Micropolis, they've got an important role to play in our various ecosystems, so I guess we owe them some respect.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the sort of girl who freaks out when there's a spider in the bath. As it happens the boys in my house do that, and I'm the one who picks up the offending arachnid and deposits him safely outside in the garden. No. It's not that I've got an aversion to these little beasties; it's just that I've never found them compellingly interesting. What I have been intrigued by, however, is the degree to which my boys (husband and son) find them totally fascinating. I guess you either get insects or you don't. And whilst I enjoyed wandering around looking at the (often frighteningly) large beetles, for whom I have total respect and awe, I still don't get it. They're great, but I'm not hooked in the way that certain other people are.

My husband was carried away on a wave of nostalgia for his childhood, and started telling us all sorts of tales about his pet insects. He'd once been an avid collector of stag beetles ... eek! He and his best mate, Albert, used to roam the woods around Montseny armed with strong knives looking for decaying wood, which they would slice open to reveal the cornucopia of life inside. Often they would find larvae as big as the first half of their little fingers. Apparently the stag beetle larvae exist in their larval state for several years, feeding on rotting deciduous wood, before they pupate.

These trophies were then carried home in a bucket to live in a specially constructed box in the basement of the house (history does not record the views of my in-laws on this encroachment of the insect world into their garage). In any event their progress was actively and enthusiastically monitored. My husband claims that all of his friends were also busy collecting stag beetles out there in the woods and that they'd get really competitive about having the largest, fiercest male. The males, which are larger and more fearsome-looking than the females, use their jaws to wrestle rivals out of the way for favoured mating sites and for food. This territorial display of masculine prowess soon became a compelling spectator sport for Mr B and his chums. In their defence I have to explain that television reception isn't great in that part of the mountains ... .

And then, one day, they woke up, grew some facial hair ... and discovered motorbikes and girls. My in-laws no doubt heaved a huge sigh of relief as they reclaimed their garage ... and they all lived happily ever after. The End.

There are hundreds and hundreds of displays of dead insects in glass display cases, which felt a bit morbid, but there are also displays of living insects. They have a great ant city with stacks of boxes and clear perspex tubes where red ants are free to swarm around all over the shop.

Everything is aimed at being educational in a fun, funky, effortless sort of a way. Emi was fizzing with excitement over the whole shooting match. He was especially keen on the spider section, even though he's scared out of his wits by spiders.

Perhaps I showed my lack of insect-fervour by enjoying the section with insect-eating plants. There was even a plant down there that threatened to devour Emi. Luckily we were able to prise him out of its killer clutches before the acidic juices dissolved his tennis shoes.

The highlight of the indoor section for me was the corner devoted to bees. Maybe this was really just a function of my enthusiasm for honey rather than the little chaps who make it, but I was fixated by the natural form hive that dangled (safely) behind a glass screen as lots of worker bees buzzed in and out working their sweet magic.

When we'd seen all the stuff inside we headed up the hill for the outdoor trail.

Now the idea of this trail is that somehow the insects have been super-sized, so that we can relate to them as not being very different from ourselves, and come to appreciate the problems that they face in their daily battle to survive. The object was to help the bugs get ready for a carnival, which might be a bit of a stretch for the adult imagination, but happily Emi was more than able to throw his mind around the notion that he could hug a housefly and show it how to throw some moves on the dance-floor.

And help a dung beetle. Lovely work!

Then he had a go at rehearsing with the bug orchestra.

And riding on the back of a stag beetle ... or is that a flee ... or am I losing it completely?

There are several imaginative, insect-inspired play areas where the little folk can run about to let off steam. The whole bug carnival theme was something that our straw poll of one embraced with real enthusiasm. As for Mr B and me, we enjoyed larking around in the sunshine and taking lots of silly photos.

They've got a very acceptable cafe if you'd like to fit in a bite of lunch or stop for a coffee. There are also lots of outdoor picnic tables where you can have a déjeuner sur l'herbe. The exhibition is run in French, as you'd expect what with it being in France and everything, but they do pretty good explanations in English. There is good wheelchair access to the indoor section, and they also have a lift to take people up the hill to the outdoor trail, but it's not really do-able if you've got a mobility issue as the pathway is pretty steep in parts. Sadly dogs are not allowed in either the outdoor or the indoor areas, so Maxi, our pooch, had to wait for us in the car.

Anyway if you find yourself with an idle moment in this part of the world it's a great way to pass an afternoon. If you'd like to visit you can find all the information here: Micropolis.

One of the best bits for me was the lovely countryside all around. The hills are teaming with wildlife. I took Maxi for a walk before we set off and enjoyed listening to the birdsong and the crickets. I even heard a cuckoo. There are loads of wild flowers. It's a truly beautiful part of the world.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

As shared on Blue Monday

Another mad dash through France ...

On Thursday afternoon we picked Emi up as soon as school finished for the half term holidays and headed straight for le tunnel to make our customary dash through France to get home to Spain for a week in the sunshine. Traffic on the M25 was bad. We counted three accidents along the way. Thankfully no one seemed to have been injured.

This jolly little caravan caught my eye as we zoomed past in the fast lane:

It looked like a tear drop, and was perfectly colour-co-ordinated with the car that was pulling it.

We missed our train with all the shenanigans on the motorway, but they allowed us to catch a later one and we made it to France only half an hour behind schedule.

Driving around Paris was tricky. The police seemed to have closed all the exits we wanted to take, which mixed things up a little more than we were comfortable with. It's not totally straight forward driving around the French capital in a right hand drive car, but finally we made it to our hotel in Orléans, and collapsed exhausted into bed.

The next morning we breakfasted on more of those delicious French croissants than we ought to have done, and bombed off to the south.

By lunchtime we were in the Auvergne, admiring the peaks of their now-extinct volcanoes.

We ran into some interesting weather along the way, but the great thing about heading south is that the weather blows over and, if you wait for half an hour, something else comes along.

By the time we got down to the Languedoc things had settled down a bit. The sun came come out again, and we decided that we needed an ice-cream and coffee break, so we pulled into Perpignan.

When we'd sampled the ice-cream menu we went for a stroll to stretch our legs after all those long hours in the car. Maxi seized on the opportunity to check out the locals. They seemed to be friendly.

Bonjour! Do you speak Schnauzer?

Perpignan is a lovely little city. We're always tickled to see any mention of Catalan in France. It makes me think how arbitrary some of our international borders are. This one, between France and Spain, seems to have cut the Catalan nation in half.

We discovered this little gem, which used to be the old Sea Consul's house. They told us it had been built back in the fourteenth century.

Isn't it a beauty? I have a soft spot for the original gothic.

At the other end of the spectrum we also liked the funky, modern theatre. It's great when a city has the confidence to mix things up a bit as between the old and the new, and the traditional and the avant garde.

Then we took a turn around the citadel in the middle of town.

We went for a walk down the side streets, but the rain seemed to be following us, so we cut it short and took refuge in our car.

Views of Perpignan

And then we sprinted the final stretch across the border to Spain, playing catch-up with the rainbows as we went.

Have a great weekend,

Bonny x