Carcassone to the Pyrennees

Day 11

Up early the next morning, we took some time to roam through Caracassone again. It was early enough to avoid the tourist bus onslaught, so we were able to enjoy the natural rhythms of the town. Shopkeepers opened up and tidied their storefronts. Neighbors bid one another good morning. Cats and dogs stretched their bodies into a lazy wakefulness. Parents walked their children to school. We discovered the school was right across the street from our B&B and had the pants charmed off us by the children in the schoolyard as they lined up to begin their day.

Watching people who I assumed to be locals (since they weren't carrying cameras and snapping a million pictures like I was), traversing the gated city entrance, I had to wonder how often they stopped to appreciate the history they walked through each day. Yes, there is an argument that Caracassone isn't authentic, because much of it has been reconstructed, but it's still an amazing site. It brought to mind a long ago conversation with a friend who had grown up in Europe when I expressed my awe of seeing a real castle for the first time. His response was something to the effect of "Oh, they're everywhere in France. You start to think to yourself, oh god, another castle?". It's sad how we become inured to our surroundings and forget to discover the wonder of it all.

Back at L'Echappee Belle, we said our goodbyes and settled our bill. We had a wonderful conversation with the owner. We told her of our dream to one day run our own B&B in France...(far, far in the future)...and she gave us some very practical and wonderful advice. And of course, during the conversation, I noticed a map of the wine regions in the Languedoc and the topic shifted to wine. When we told her that we were headed towards the Pyrenees, she mentioned that we should stop in the town of Limoux, to taste the 'original champagne' blanquette. Our curiosities piqued, we decided we had to make a stop and discover it for ourselves.

Limoux was a very pretty town, although when we arrived it was a quiet day. It could have been the impending rain or maybe just the day of the week we arrived. We took a brief tour, enjoying the architecture and the general 'feel' of the town. I would have been happy to stay a little longer and linger at a cafe, but DH was a man with a mission and we had a lot of ground to cover yet that day. So we packed ourselves back in the car and drove slightly out of town center where we finally managed to find a cave. We pulled up and dropped in for a tasting. We had to find out what this blanquette was all about.

I'm not a huge lover of champagne, so my palate may fall short of some one else who truly loves the bubbly. But we did a tasting which introduced us to a range of different blanquettes from one vintner. I found most of them to be too carbonated to my taste, almost with an alka-seltzer like aftertaste that left me wanting the 'real' champagne. But we did settle on a demi-sec that had nice depth to it and a young fruity blanquette that was wonderfully intriguing in taste. We added our conquests to our burgeoning collection of French wines and forged on.

Resuming our journey, we headed south on the D118, passing through Quillan and picking up D117 to the west. As the majestic pre-Pyrenees started to spring up around us, we both marvelled at the sheer scale of what we were experiencing. From D117, we took a detour to the Gorges de Galamus, which the Micheline map indicated as another green (scenic) road with some stunning belvederes.

There was a lookout point at the mouth of the Gorges, where we stopped to stretch our legs and drink in the lush green vistas of the mountains and the valley. Standing at the edge of the mountain, the wind cut strongly through the air, muffling any sound, and instilling the landscape with an incredible energy. Even though a handful of other travellers were there too, we almost had the feeling of having this wonderful world all to ourselves.

The drive through Galamus probably places second on our list of heart attack producing drives. It has to be one of the narrowest roads we have ever been on- with barely enough room for one car to scratch through. Since I wasn't the one driving the car, remarkably I felt pretty safe. As my husband aired his discontent, I took comfort from the stone walls lining the road and obscuring the depth of the gorges to our left, the close proximity of the mountains on the other side and extremely close to the car roof rocky overhangs. You see, it's all in the perspective.

Eventually, the road arrived at a plateau, and it was smooth sailing to Chateau de Peyerpetruse. Peyrepetruse is one of the 'five sons of Carcassone' , a group of Cathar castles that once guarded these valleys. Built upon strategically selected mountain ridges, these castles seem to organically blossom from their geographic standpoints. Approaching Peyrepetruse, my husband didn't believe me at first when I pointed out it's silhouette atop the mountain.

We arrived at Peyrepetruse, paid our admission and picked up the ever informative audioguides. It took us about two hours to fully explore the fortress ruins. Without our audioguides, we could have rushed through the fortress in less time, but the well narrated program helped us to slow down and really enjoy the history and the experience.

One could easily understand why they chose to build a fortress here. There were sweeping views across the valley floor, that would have given the sentries easy visibility of any invading forces. The nearest neighboring Cathar castle, Chateau de Queribus was also clearly visible in the distance.

Hiking through the castle grounds, each section rose a bit higher until your reached the highest point, the Chateau St. Georges. If I hadn't made my second fashion mistake of the trip, climbing and descending would have been much easier. But today, I decided to wear a skirt. On the valley floor, this wasn't issue. But scrambling around the top of Peyerpetruse it was, with a wind so strong, that I had to keep one hand on my skirt at all times to keep it from flying up into my face. At least I wore flat sandals. Going up wasn't too bad, but coming down was a slow and tortuous procedure. I do suffer from mild vertigo, and the strong wind was making it worse. I was extremely grateful for the rope guardrails you could clutch with ultimate fear as you made a slow descent.

Back at the car, my husband pulled out the TRIP FOLDER - an amazing work of organization that my husband compiles for every trip we take. It contains everything- from flight info, to train tickets, to emergency contacts, B&B reservation confirmations and even detailed maps printed out from Michelin.com of how to get to our B&Bs once we arrive in each city. He flipped through the folder looking for the info on our next B&B just outside of Villefranche de Conflent. Well, we had the detailed map- but it wasn't so detailed, and we had no printout of the email with our reservation confirmations- that would have included the name of the B&B (which neither of us could remember) and the relevant contact info.

No problem, we figured when we got to Villefranche, that it wouldn't be a large town and we would be able to sort things out in good time. If not, then we would be able to solve our problem at the tourist office or find an internet cafe and locate the information we needed in our email.

When we finally arrived at Villefranche, we were shit out of luck, as the wonderful expression goes. We followed what we thought was the correct road, just past the fortified old city and found NO signs of any B&Bs. So we parked and entered the village. Villefranche itself is only two long streets, and after circling them three times, we finally found the tourist office- which was now closed for the evening. I then asked someone where the nearest internet cafe might be, and was told that maybe there was one in Prades, which was twenty minutes away by car. And we still couldn't remember the name of the B&B. We were both tired and getting hungry at this point, so we weren't exactly a picture of marital bliss.

As we started to backtrack to Prades, my husband decided to take one more quick turn off the highway- one that we had missed before. There we spotted some signs, including one for a B&B, L'Ombre d'Or. Hallelujah! This was the name that we were trying to remember!

We pulled up to the house and were greeted by the owners Barry and Sharon and their two adorable daughters. They immediately made us feel welcome as they oriented us to the house and the grounds. And we laughed, as they apologized for the weather. We joked that it had been following us throughout France, almost like a curse. But we didn't care, we were in France and we were on vacation. A little wind and rain wasn't going to ruin it for us.

We had bought supplies for a picnic dinner earlier, and I asked Sharon if it was OK to picnic out by the pool. She said it was no problem, and if it got too cold or started to rain, we were more than welcome to use the dining room. She even set out plates and cutlery in the kitchen for us.

After we settled in to our room, we grabbed our dinner and two bottles of wine from our overflowing collection, and headed out to the pool. The air was a bit chilly, but the view was fantastic. We were surrounded by mountains. I knew that one of them was Mt Canigou, but since clouds obscured the tops of the peaks, I couldn't be sure of which one. The Tet river bounded the grounds on one side and on the other, was the depot for Le Train Jaune.

As we feasted on cheese, bread, tapenade, octopus salad, ratatouille and pate, the rain began to fall. My husband managed to find an umbrella for the table, allowing us to remain and enjoy our meal en plein air. After we were sufficiently stuffed, we cleaned up and put everything back in it's place.

We ended the evening on the private terrace outside our room, sipping wine and watching the mists of clouds burn and rise off the mountain side.