Garonne view

Here you stand on the banks of River Garonne.  This is the perfect moment to take a photo of The Stone Bridge. The Garona, in Occitan, which flows under the archways, is a mainly French river. It rises in Spain before flowing into the Atlantic ocean 529 km away. Several French departments are named after it, and it has been a major shipping and freight route. In the 18th century, it enabled Bordeaux to become the leading port in France and the second largest in the world behind London. The “gabarres”, or flat-bottomed barges, sailed the river section and then unloaded their cargoes onto larger boats. In 1822, the construction of the stone bridge put an end to maritime trade upstream from Bordeaux, as boats could no longer get through. However, they still managed to get to Bordeaux, and that’s all that mattered.