The consensus was that Iraq wasn't going to be a reasonable possibility so we opted to go to Ain Diwar, the site of a Roman bridge where the borders of Iraq, Turkey and Syria meet in the north-eastern corner of Syria. We hired a driver for the afternoon and headed east.

The bridge itself is only the remaining arch of a bridge built by the Romans (or the Romanians, as the signs inform the meagre handful of tourists who make it out here), a remote and heavily militarised site. We had to leave our passports with one of the checkpoints along the way, presumably to ensure that we didn't try to skip the border into Turkey...

There were sandstone panels depicting the signs of the zodiac on one side (pictured), as well as a black-and-white mosaic round the back (also pictured). The Roman camp of Bezabda once stood on this side of the river, and the bridge was, historians tell us, built to give access to Roman-occupied Anatolia.