Lessons in history and town planning, Glanum, France

Zagan the motorhome is parked up under the much-needed shade of a tree, in a car park that his predecessor Dave stayed in some five years ago. He’s at the car park for the Village des Bories (N43.90116,E5.19243) just south of Gordes in Provence. Sometimes France just has too many overnight stopping places to choose from, so when we realised we were all hot and tired, and everyone around us was driving like a nutcase, we opted for somewhere nearby that we knew.

Village des Bories Car Park

After a couple of days in the Camargue it was time to start our journey northwards. Chris and Peter had kindly got in touch via a blog comment to let us know of a couple of places they visited nearby so, with a quick check for places to stay, off we went. Driving along the main road back out of the Camargue, the smell of horses hung in the air, as the now unsaddled beasts (maybe they only work the weekend) gathered in the shade around their water troughs. The land around us turned from salt water marshes and horse fields, to paddy fields growing the famous Camargue rice.

But there was one thing I really wanted to see, and just as we left the area I spotted it. In a field away from the road and behind some trees were around eight bulls, enjoying their freedom before they are hauled into the arena to entertain the locals. Most towns we drove through had warning signs for bulls. Some of them it wasn’t easy to tell if they were warning of demonstrations about bulls being mistreated, or demonstrations involving bulls – sadly I think it was the latter.

As we started to climb over the Alpilles we passed a signpost for Les Baux de Provence. Once past the turning Jay informed me that it was supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in France, then let out an evil laugh as we had gone past it. As we reached the top of the Alpilles, I was still grumbling about Jay being a spoil-sport (I think he’s a bit tired of visiting picturesque, touristy towns) when several icons flashed on our satnav to show we were approaching a Point of Interest (POI). As the POI files we’ve loaded into satnav are all places to stay, I realised it was somewhere I’d read the reviews about this morning when we were planning our day. By now it was getting close to lunchtime, so we pulled in (N43.75676,E4.83424) and while Charlie and I relaxed in the shade of Zagan, Jay set off for a walk up to a viewpoint.

Jay loves a good viewpoint

We were tempted to stay for the night, but a couple of the reviews had said the Gendarmerie had asked them to leave, so we headed off after a spot of lunch. Just three kilometres down the road we arrived at Glanum. In our travels we have seen a fair few ruins from Pompeii and Greek Temples in Italy, to Olympia , Delphi and the Acropolis in Greece, as well as mosaic houses in Sicily and Roman ruins used for grazing sheep in Tunisia, so we weren’t really in a rush to visit another ruin. However, after looking it up on the internet, I was intrigued.

Glanum, like many other places, had been through a number of incarnations. Its first inhabitants arrived in the seventh century BC, drawn to the source of an underground spring emerging from a cleft in the mountain. Around the fourth century BC a tribe of Celto-Ligurian people, the Salyens, built a town there and named it Glanum in honour of their Celtic god, Glanis, who was associated with the healing spring. In the second century BC the Greeks brought wealth and their own Hellenistic style of building and finally the Romans colonised it in the very early years of Augustus’ reign, just about the time Jesus was wandering around on the planet. The town was finally abandoned in 260 AD and lay buried in the earth for 17 centuries, before being discovered and excavated in 1921.

This mausoleum and arch were by the north entrance to the town so are now in the car park

I found it fascinating that when archaeologists started to uncover what they thought was a Roman town, they found it built on a pile of Greek hardcore. A bit like knocking down a 600 year old place back home, then building something new on top of it. These days it probably wouldn’t happen, there would be uproar, but back in Roman times it seems it was the done thing. And that the town had laid undiscovered for all those years. A patient who had admitted himself to the asylum at the Monastery St. Paul de Mausole on the outskirts of St. Remy-de-Provence had done several paintings of the area, unaware of what lay under the olive groves. You might have heard of him, his name was Vincent Van Gogh.

Checking with the security guard at the car park we were told we couldn’t stop overnight, and at that point my interest in the site waned a tad, but Jay pulled me along and I am so glad he did. As we stepped out of the visitors’ entrance (after paying our €8 each) we were felt like we had gone back in time. The air was hot and humid, the trees bright green, the sky bright blue and the cicadas were singing all around us – it felt like we should be wearing togas! Luckily we both had our walking sandals on, so at least felt part Roman.

Glanum Main Street

Wandering along main street

Swimming pool with carved head to spew the water into the pool, it wouldn’t look out of place in a modern spa

As it was Monday we had the place pretty much to ourselves and spent just over an hour wandering around. We would have taken longer and sat in the shade of the trees pretending to be Greek Gods and peeling grapes, but Charlie wasn’t allowed to visit, so we’d had to leave him in Zagan and couldn’t stay out to play for too long.

A few columns have been reconstructed to give you an idea of the size of the place – huge!

Walking down the main street we could easily imagine people going about their daily business over two thousand years ago. A spot of shopping in the local market place, followed by a dip in the pool to cool off – complete with a carving of a man’s face spewing fresh water from the healing spring. Whenever we visit a site like this it never ceases to amaze me as to how advanced the Greeks and Romans were when it came to living day to day. Of course we probably only see the homes of the very wealthy, but to have underfloor heating and running water to flush through the loos is quite an achievement if you ask me.

The healing spring looks a tad murky today but the goldfish didn’t seem to mind

I’ve seen stone cladding on bricks, but the Romans did brick cladding on stone

Roman monuments to Hercules

After a final look out over the site from the belvedere (with Mont Ventoux forming a distant backdrop), we got back into Zagan and set course for a parking area in the town Chris and Peter recommended which was just a kilometre up the road. Sadly our timing was out as we had arrived the day after a rock festival weekend and the day of an arts tour. The streets were lined with lorries dismantling the stage and rock concerts paraphernalia, while the car parks were over-flowing. We squeezed our way out of the town and headed for an overnight parking at Rousillon, considered one of the most impressive villages in France, which was another hour away.

We’d managed to time our drive at school kicking out time, which meant parents in a rush in their cars. Around us people pulled silly stunts, overtaking into on coming traffic causing us to brake heavily, trying to parallel park as close to where they needed to be as possible, even if that was on a single lane exit of a roundabout. Satnav wasn’t helping matters either. Taking full advantage of me being a second pair of eyes for Jay which meant I was distracted from the map (I tend to argue with her a lot) she  grasped the opportunity to send us down as many narrow lanes as she could. Getting increasingly, and irrationally, angry with a piece of electronics I grabbed the map and directed us here. It’s nothing great, just a patch of land by a tourist attraction that we have no intention of visiting. But it got us off the roads and will be a nice restful home for tonight with a smattering of other motorhomes to keep us company.

Ju x