First off... big sorry for yesterday’s moan! We gave ourselves a stiff talking to as we gazed out over the lovely view in the cool of the evening. Tut! So up at 6.30 today and on the banks of the Rhône at 8.30. A nice strong breeze and totally super.
Album
https://photos.app.goo.gl/jrtVLiGmA2eyMit78
We parked by the newly painted Halte Fluviale up river from the Château d’Hers and walked north to the three bridges - Road, Autoroute, TGV.
There were barges, butterflies, and a group of four languid swans.
They were just floating, one was asleep and they all had one foot raised. Strange.
Having braved crossing the road, we got to the undersides of he autoroute and TGV bridges. There were a couple of cyclists having a break - gentlemen of a cerain age! One of them came over and told us about a really interesting structure across the river. More in a bit...
We decided to turn back at this point, waiting first to snap the
Camargue chugging towards Avignon.
Swans hadn’t moved much!
So what of this thing across the river? It is in fact the remains of a bridge, blown up on 19 August 1944 by the Allies. But its significance is that the last people to cross it on 18 August were 700 deportees who were being transported on the Nazi Train Fantôme to the Death Camps in Eastern Europe.
This is an amazing, horrific story from the dying days of the war. They’d been gathered up from all over France
http://www.lesdeportesdutrainfantome.org/index.htm
It was now heating up. Swarms of grasshoppers were colliding with us. A nightingale was singing full volume in a tree trying to out do the road noise. Lunch! There’s a couple of good
restaurants in Caderousse under the plane trees, so that’s where we headed.
We plumped for La Providence and their 16 euro guaranteed home cooked menu. It was lovely.
