Up
nice and early this morning, but unfortunately the weather wasn’t
on our side and was decidedly grey and misty. We decided to go to
Carcassonne
and scout out a suitable place to get some pictures of the old city
walls that evening when they were all lit up. Parked up at La Cité
and walked down to the main city to look for that viewpoint. After a
bit of wandering about we found somewhere in what I think was the
rough end of a hospital car park, but it looked promising and we
decided to return that evening.
Walked
back up feeling absolutely knackered (me), I hadn’t slept that well
the night before so it really took it out of me, I looked like a
cadaverous, hollow eyed spectre. We went, well I loomed, into a
rather chic café and after terrifying the small madam’s nibbling
on their croissants, sat down to recover with an astoundingly priced
coffee and pain au chocolat. When I was feeling slightly more human
again we bought ourselves a ticket for a tour on the city ramparts.
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| A view across town to the outer wall |
There
has been habitation on the site since around 3500BC but it was when
the Romans started throwing their weight around and fortified the
hilltop about 100BC that things began to get interesting for
Carcassonne. Despite the many alterations, and additions that have
been added to the walls over the years, as we saw on the tour, the
Roman parts are still visible. In fact because of the different
technologies in stonework, you can see where each new ‘layer’ has
been added throughout the centuries.
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| View of ramparts and 'modern' city below |
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| View along the ramparts |
The
guide we had was really interesting and we learnt all sorts of facts
about all sorts of things. For example do you know why Languedoc is
called what it is? Well it’s because the local populace, who have
always been very proud of their heritage, used to speak Occitan, a
language whose closest relative is Catalan, and was historically the
main language spoken in the southern half of France, and parts of
Italy and Spain, unofficially known as Occitania. In fact up until
the 14th century Occitan was understood and well used
throughout most of educated Europe, but it started to decline after
that and was almost wiped out during the French Revolution, when
diversity of language was considered a threat. Anyway, this region
is central to the Occitan language, the language of Oc, which in
Occitan is Lenga d’oc, and in French is Langue d’oc, so, this is the
reason it is called Languedoc.
There,
consider yourself told.
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| The wall encircles, among other things, the Theatre Jean Deschamps. It has lots of seats. |
After
that we strolled back to the car where we ploughed through a tough
cheese baguette we’d made that morning, from, you guessed it,
yesterdays baguette, we then rolled out from Carcassonne and towards
Abbaye de St Hilaire.
Founded in the eighth century this was the site where a monk first
discovered sparkling wine, a beverage that the champagne region seems
to have taken to it’s heart. Took a few pictures in the cloisters,
which by now was quite sunny and peaceful, at least that was, until a
school group turned up and did their best to ruin it for everyone, so
we decided to make our escape, but not before I’d dashed off a
quick request to the big man to smite them mightily and without
mercy.
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| The serene cloisters of Abbaye de St Hilaire |
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| Some intriguing steps at the abbey |
On
the road out we stopped for a very photogenic looking old barn with
accompanying vegetation who obliged us with a picture, before
arriving in Limoux, a rather busy and frantic town, where we almost struggled to find a
parking space. Walking out from the car park I noticed we were
getting a few stares from people who had obviously seen better days,
or were on their way to seeing worse ones, and I had an uncomfortable
feeling that our belongings might be better of with us, rather than
the back of the car. This was probably something to do with the fact
I’d had my car broken into a couple of weeks before we left, and
that we were leaving behind about £4000 of camera equipment, but
perhaps I was just feeling guilty about demanding those children be
smited earlier and had a inkling that karma was about kick me in the
nuts.
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| A vineyard and an accommodating barn |
Either
way, we decided to go back and load up with all our belongings,
before heading into the main square and getting a coffee. This was
quite easily, Toulouse & Narbonne aside, which we just drove
through, the busiest place we had been to all week, and it was quite
odd to see so many people going about their lives, all together out
in the open, crossing this way and that, talking and well, being
there. It wasn’t that many of course, but after travelling through
so many villages and small towns where you’d see a handful of
people at best, and most of the time absolutely no one at all, and
this could be at any time of day, it was an odd sight. It did
surprise me how empty those places were and made me wonder what
everyone does, but I suppose they do what everyone else does, they go
to work, come home and sit in front of the TV, there are just less of
them to do it.
The
coffee was crap by the way, and certainly not for the first time.
Which kind of throws out my general theory of how coffee tastes
better outside of the UK. But maybe I was being too hard line about
it, maybe there isn’t a definite cut off point between good and
bad, there are actually gradations of goodness, so because France is
near the UK, it’s not quite far enough away to totally evade the
bad coffee aura that permeates from blighty, whereas Italy is in fact
far enough. As a theory it probably needs more rigorous scientific
experimentation to be the accepted standard, but in the mean time it
will have to do.
After
that it was on to Alet Les Bains a very picturesque medieval village, with a beautiful town square and
lots of small winding roads and half timbered buildings, basically
all the usual stuff. It probably sounds quite monotonous to read
about them, but they are a joy to visit, and not repetitive at all,
it’s just difficult to describe half timbered buildings and winding
roads in any other way.
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| As you can see, they haven't got around to taking down the Christmas decorations yet. |
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| I can't resist an old door, and rightly so. |
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| A water fountain in the town square |
Then
we headed up to Renne le Chateau, in fact quite far up, as this
little village is perched high up in the hills and boasts a very
scenic road up to it. After threading our way through the village, to
the car park at the other end, we got out and admired the view which
encompasses both the Pyrenees and Cevennes ranges to the south and
northeast respectively. But this tiny place is not just famous for
its views, its history is the main draw here. This so called history
contains a plethora of conspiracy theories, including such topics as the Knights Templar, the Cathars, the
treasures of the Temple of Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant, the
Priory of Sion, the Holy Grail, ley lines, sacred geometry, Mary
Magdalene, the remains of JC and even flying saucers. When
Dan Brown made references to the place in The Da Vinci Code, it
bought in tens of thousands of visitors a year, and I have absolutely
no idea how they all managed to get in, on the way out I had to wait
for 5 minutes behind a small hatchback which had stopped to have a
chat, the driver, not the car, because it blocked the entire road.
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| A view from Renne le Chateau |
We
rounded off the day by taking a tour of the amazing chateaux that
adorn this area. First up was Chateau d’Arques which looked very comely with a waving field of grass in front of it.
Next was Chateau Termes, which we didn’t stop to photograph, but it was quite an impressive
ruin perched on top of a large hill, got some good views as we drove
past, on our way to Chateau de Durfort, a real ruin of a castle, at this time of the evening all the chateaux
were shut, but even if we had wanted to go in this one it wouldn’t
have been possible, as it was too dangerous. But we stopped to get
some pictures of its crumbling fortifications in the evening sun.
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| Chateau d'Arques |
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| Chateau de Durfort |
We
then drove into Carcassonne and found our spot from earlier on,
unfortunately our timing wasn’t great, as we had just missed the
warm sunlight in the city walls, it disappeared just as we were
setting up the cameras, we then had to wait around an hour for it to
be dark enough for the same walls to be illuminated by the lights
placed around the perimeter of the Citè. But eventually the
stonework started to glow a warm orange as we busied ourselves with
taking an inordinate amount of pictures.
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| La Cite all lit up |
After
that we headed into the centre to see if at 10pm there was anywhere
that would be willing to serve us, and found ourselves a couple of
decent pizzas before driving back to the gite and getting some much
needed rest.
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