If you can tear yourself away from modern Saint-Remy-de-Provence* (and the ice-cream shop just into the old town from the Republique bus stop (the terminus) is highly recommended) – then you head due south, up a busy road with little provision for pedestrians, past the tourist office. I provide these directions because this is a town astonishingly lacking in signs and the street maps that most French tourist centres are liberally sprinkled with – and the tourist office is usefully closed on Sunday.

It is uphill all the way, which at least means a downhill run “home”. And just when you are starting to wonder if there’ll be sufficient reward for this hard work, on the right the official entrance to what was ancient Gallo-Greek, then Roman, town of Glanum.

It is a fitting introduction, for it marks the moment that the town changed hands – the astonishingly intact (and it doesn’t look restored) mausoleum is that of the family Julii, who took their name, of course, from Caesar, when they fought in his army against those dreadful barbarian Gauls. (Although when you get into Glanum you’ll find they were pretty damned civilised for barbarians – indeed with buildings scarcely distinguishable from the Roman.)

In the Place d’Horologie, which is the tourist centre of Avignon, with at least an angled view of the Palaise des Papes, is a roundabout that inevitably, with its lights and music, attracts the eye (and today, particularly, floods of small children).

I was watching the fun – it seems there’s a gender split. Wheneverthere was a male present, he got to ride with the children too small to be left on their own, while mum waited with stroller and waved at each pass. Not sure which is the preferable job really – one child was bellowing its lungs out with fear…

And I was watching a girl of eight or so, far too fearful for her age. Unable to find the stirrups on her own, obviously worried about losing her balance, she reminded me of myself at that age – totally physically inept through lack of exposure to physical activity.

Later, wandering along I was thinking about trying to learn French by reading books (I’ll be telling you soon about the first book in French that I hope to read all the way through – not counting 10-page guidebooks), and reflecting that this was how I learnt at least the more sophisticated corners of English. There are still words that when I go to say them I realise I don’t know how to pronounce because I’ve only ever read them.

It is that time of year when one tends to reflect on where you’ve come, and overall, I’m pretty happy with the progress from the suburbs of Sydney thus far.

A gorgeous day yesterday, too nice to be spent in museums, so I started out at the famous Pont Saint-Benezet, famous chiefly, I gather, for a rather irritating children’s song, which was anyway factually incorrect, since in the 19th century they danced under, rather than on, the bridge – probably safer. But still the 19th-century did save four spans of the rather remarkable structure. It was built in the 12th century – what was described as the “first bridge” – although archaeologists have found it had a Roman predecessor, and the medieval constructors used its foundations, at least in part.

But the Rhone was still a big challenge – and it was beaten – the legend says by a God-inspired shepherd boy of 11 who came down to the town and told the people to build the bridge, laying the first, impossibly large, foundation stone himself. That was of course Benezet – who is buried in the lower of these two chapels – well he was, until his body went on one of those inevitable medieval wandering courses.

That first bridge was pulled down by the nasty French, after the Avgnonaise, an early independent Republic under the suzerainty of the Count of Toulouse, were so unwise as to side with the Albigensians (believers in Manicheism). (The walls, and the merchants and nobles great defensive tower houses went too.) But the bridge soon went up again and continued in use until the 17th century.
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