Lunch at the salt pans

I had a friend plus four old work acquaintances here in May for 12 days - four of them were new to the region, so we covered all the usual interesting places. 

One place I hadn't been to before was the restaurant next to the Salt Museum at Gruissan – La Cambuse du Saunier. Between us, we had a delicious selection of seafood. Not surprisingly, some of the specialities of the house are fish, chicken or duck cooked encrusted in salt.  I think they will need to be tried another day…...

Salt encrusted chicken. While no one had this on the day, we saw someone else's lunch being served as the staff remove the salt and prepare it at the front counter.

 

And a few photos from some of our other 'out and about' days:

Tromp l'oeil at Agde

The oyster beds at Bouzigues

Picnic on the river bed at Roquebrun

Sunday markets at St Chinian

Uzes and Pont du Gard

OK I have a little catching up to do here ….. things have gotten away from me these last few months, to say the least. I have no visitors or plans for the next 6 weeks or so, so am looking forward to things slowing down, especially as the temperature is climbing and it seems summer is well and truly here.

Back in April, our village group did a day trip by bus to the village of Uzes and the Pont du Gard, north of Montpellier. A 7.30am start from behind the post office – a full bus – and we were off.

Uzes is a beautiful town, very much on the tourist map, but at that time of year not overly crowded. We had a local guide and an interesting and informative walk around. But given the distance we’d had to drive, and the fact that we had to allow 2 hours for lunch (of course), I would have like to have spent a little more time there. Perhaps another time.

So it was on to the Pont du Gard. I’d visited before but it was really just a short stop on the way back from somewhere. This time we again had a guide who had the keys to unlock the barrier and took us across the top from one side to the other. Quite a different perspective and a great view to boot.

Yep - full bus-load of us.....

Pont du Gard, the Roman aqueduct – 51 kms long, constructed in the 1st century to carry an estimated 200 million litres of water a day to Nimes.

This is the walkway across the top, through the viaduct itself. The bulging rock-like stuff is a build-up of calcium and mineral deposits from all the years of its use.