Beaucaire to Nimes
It was a beautiful sunny morning so we set off past last night’s restaurant in search of the castle (very obvious from almost everywhere)
And stumbled upon yet another bull ring
Outside there was a plaque to commemorate the matadors who had come second, we suspected the bull didn’t come off too well either despite his success although I’m told that the winning bulls are the ones they really want to breed from .
– so who knows! I’m also told that a top bull fighter is paid 300k euros a bullfight, sounds like a lot of money, but nothing would get me in there with one of those things.
We then dawdled off in the direction of Nimes which was quite complicated because of the plethora of busy roads and the non busy ones which are ‘rat runs’ with traffic going very fast. There was nothing particularly spectacular about it except it was an enjoyable ride. We stopped for our picnic lunch in Manduel
which was a quiet a pretty place but noticed and extraordinary amount of men hanging about obviously unemployed. The answer was given to us later, the grape harvest now being finished leaves a lot of manual workers with nothing to do but hang around the square and the bars chatting. Further on we passed a ‘pigeon’ farm from which there was a lot of cooing but not easy to take a picture as there was a high hedge!
Entering Nimes was pretty scary, the cycling guide books had warned us not to go there unless you are experienced at riding through busy traffic, and they were not wrong. The traffic was everywhere, very close and fast – but we made it to the Office du Tourisme (open even at 7pm) and they found us a hotel (best friend of lady in Office du Tourisme) which was brilliant. The hotel owner recommended the lady with a restaurant next door which was a good call because it only had 4 tables; everything was fresh and the local speciality Boeuf ‘Guardianne de Taureau’ simply delicious. We were a bit worried about which part of the bull it might have been, but all was well! Walking around Nimes is fascinating. In the centre the Roman influence is everywhere and this is underlined by a mini Coliseum still in extremely good condition but as it is now a Unesco World Heritage site further renovations are also in progress.
In our hotel there was an aerial photo of the ‘coliseum’ taken in 2005 when a bull fight was in progress. It is reputed to seat 20,000 people and was full the highest tier – and that at a time when hardly any renovation work had been done on it at all – built in 40BC!
Nimes is also famous for creating' De Nime' as in jeans and jackets but when we asked whether the city still produced denim we were told ‘no, all production has now gone to the ‘Etats Unis’ – typical!!
The city has also adopted the mascot of a ‘crocodile chained to a palm tree, this is because coins were minted to celebrate the conquering of Egypt by the Romans in the 2nd century AD
Shortly after arriving at the hotel two lady cyclists arrived with about as much luggage as we were carrying – obviously travellers like us we thought, they were Dutch (we also thought, crickey, had they come all the way from Holland) but sadly we never got to speak with them so like ships in the night we simply passed on.
Now tomorrow we are picking up a car in ‘downtown Nimes’ and driving the 5 hours to Gensac (which is close to St Emilion) for a very special birthday party.
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