Montségur, Mirepoix and Carcassonne
by Karoline Cullen
The rocky trail angles steeply upwards and demands all my attention.
Protruding rocks and roots make for slow progress as I try not to trip. Looking at the foreboding ruin above, I find the cool, gray weather an appropriate and atmospheric match. I tackle the trail once more, clambering over obstacles to finally arrive, huffing and puffing a bit, at the entrance.
In the Languedoc region of southwestern France, I am meandering through a medieval hit list of sights. From a remote Cathar outpost to a busy market town to the stunningly restored walls of a major fortified city, these places ooze atmosphere. It is a short drive through rolling vineyards from the ruin of Montségur to the market in Mirepoix to Carcassonne, but each offers a distinct glimpse into the past.
The ruin of Montségur perches on a hilltop in the foothills of the Pyrenees. My arduous climb to this lonely crag is rewarded with panoramic views of lush hillsides dotted with purple blooming wild sage and silent sheep. All that remains of the castle are crumbling walls and part of a keep. A sighing wind whispers over the walls.
As it takes no time at all to walk around the inside, I try imagining how hundreds of people survived months of siege in such a small space during the Albigensian crusades of the 1200s. The crusades were mounted against the Cathars, whose beliefs mixed Christian and Middle Eastern philosophies. All across the Languedoc, Cathars took refuge in hilltop fortresses such as this, but to no avail. Many were martyred and the faith destroyed. I slowly circumnavigate the hilltop outside the walls. The surrounding green hills are a soothing antidote to the somber history of this windy place.
In contrast to the desolate loneliness of Montségur castle, Mirepoix is a bustling market town. Pastel coloured, half-timbered houses above wood frame arcades line the main square. Gargoyles on the church supervise the crowds around the curlicue adorned market. At the other end of the square sits the 14th century town hall. Each decorative wooden beam has a different carved head, demon, or animal.
As in medieval times, vendors and shoppers jam the streets on market day. Mouth-watering aromas from meats cooking on rotisseries perfume the air. Sellers compete for customers with raucous cries extolling the virtues of their melons, strawberries or asparagus. A cheese maker brandishes a long saber and deftly cuts a sample of his goat cheese. I happily tell him it is marvelous and buy a piece. In a country where markets are an art form, this ranks as one of the best.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Montségur’s crumbling castle are the immaculately restored walls, bastions, and towers of Carcassonne’s Cité. Viewed across vineyards, the fortress stands as if from a fairy tale. Fortified since Roman times, Carcassonne was a Cathar stronghold in the Middle Ages. In the 1800s, Viollet-le-Duc imaginatively restored the double walls and the chateau they shelter. At a time when so many of France’s monuments were being neglected, he rallied for restoration. The project took fifty years and sadly, he did not live to see its glorious completion.
Inside the fortress, crowded narrow streets are lined with souvenir stands, restaurants, and half-timbered houses. I wander past patrons dining at tables under a leafy canopy, artists painting water colours and children in crusader outfits brandishing plastic swords. Two falconers, with their beady-eyed charges gripping their leather-gloved arms, add to the medieval atmosphere. On the grass lices between the long inner and outer sheer rock walls, I stroll in relative solitude past black slate roofed towers and square cut bastions. Carcassonne is a World Heritage Site and the fortress, while impressive by day, is stunningly lit at night. As the evening sky fades to a dusky blue and the spotlights come on, the fairy tale towers and walls glow golden. I readily imagine a centurion slowly patrolling the walls.
René Descartes said, “Travelling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.” In the medieval Languedoc, their stories are as varied as the places they lived.
Medieval Cité of Carcassonne Guided Tour for 2 Hours
If You Go:
If You Go:♦ Carcasson Tourist Information
♦ Cathar & other Medieval Castles in the Languedoc-Roussillon
♦ Montségur to Mirepoix is a 40-minute drive and Mirepoix to Carcassonne is about the same distance.
About the author:
Karoline Cullen is a Photographer and Journalist
Director, British Columbia Association of Travel Writers
♦ www.bcatw.org/karoline-cullen
♦ www.cullenphotos.ca
Photos by Cullen Photos:
Montségur castle on its lonely peak
Montségur walls
Mirepoix houses
Inner and outer Carcassonne walls
Carcassonne at night
Carcassonne falcon
The captain and deckhand swiftly dismantle the roof and windows of our boat’s raised wheelhouse as an ancient stone bridge comes into view. We crouch and duck our heads; the vessel just barely fits underneath. Beyond, the boat slips serenely along on a ribbon of green under a shady canopy of plane trees. At the occasional break in the foliage, we spot a tall church spire, sprawling vineyards and the distant snowy peaks of the Pyrenees. Our captain will not need to replace the wheelhouse for days to come. It is May, and the weather remains blissfully warm and dry. Welcome to the Canal du Midi, which crosses Languedoc in the sunny South of France.
We arrive in the town of Beziers on the 330th anniversary of the canal’s official opening. Gala concerts, sound and light shows, and fireworks mark the event. With narrow cobblestone streets, a beautiful hillside park, and inviting little outdoor restaurants, Beziers is the birthplace of Pierre-Paul Riquet, the genius who conceived and spearheaded the 150-mile long canal project, beginning in the 1660s. The goal was to link the Atlantic with the Mediterranean, thereby avoiding the dangerous journey around Spain and past the fierce Barbary pirates. Its design is unlike most other canals, in France and elsewhere, which are excavated trenches that generally follow natural river valleys and draw their water supply from those rivers. The Canal du Midi follows the contours of hillsides and crosses right over natural features like rivers and streams on the raised archways of elegant stone aqueducts. Its source of water is a large mountain reservoir. Near Beziers, the canal leaps up a steep stone “staircase” of nine consecutive locks and later tunnels through a low mountain. A 17th century engineering marvel.
Captain Uli Weber picks us up at our hotel, along with our Australian companions Jan Kenchington and Janette Frost, and drives us west out of Beziers to join Caroline, which we have booked through FranceCruises.com. Built in the 1920s as a classic Dutch sailing barge, the boat is brightly painted with graceful hull lines, upswept both fore and aft, and a broad, spacious main deck. We are greeted by Uli’s wife Ute, who takes us below and shows us to our well-appointed cabins.
Caroline, however, is a much smaller and more intimate boat. Uli and Ute are the owners. They live aboard year-round and do everything themselves, which allows them to charge considerably less. He pilots the barge, is waiter at mealtimes, and serves as driver and highly knowledgeable guide during side trips in their mini-van. She is the five-star chef, with 250 cookbooks in her collection, as well as chambermaid and deckhand while docking or going through locks. From the first moments, we feel ourselves to be guests in a lovingly decorated home. It is an informal space that is planted with on-deck flower beds and studded with cushioned deck chairs, zany wooden sculptures, even a tiny pond full of fishes and water lilies. Although there is a cozy salon below, with a dining table, sofas and a wood-burning fireplace, we are favoured by good weather and take most meals up on deck.
For guests who prefer to sample the many interesting canal-side eateries, the Caroline cruises offer a lower priced half-board option. Guests take breakfast and a large lunch on board but eat most dinners in nearby restaurants at their own expense. We do this one night and enjoy an excellent dinner with wine at a classic auberge within easy staggering distance of the moored barge. Another variation is to have lunch in a market restaurant during a side trip, or to select and bring back the fixings for a picnic lunch or a barbecue on board the boat. Uli and Ute are flexible and open to all suggestions. One side trip takes us to the morning market in a nearby town, where Uli invites us to select anything we want him to purchase for our lunch. There are at least 25 kinds of olives, prepared in different ways, and an amazing assortment of cheeses and dry salamis, with each vendor offering taste tests. I am eager to try the Mediterranean oysters, and Uli knows just who has the best shellfish. Back on board, Ute serves me half of them raw, and they are the freshest and most succulent I have ever eaten. The rest she grills lightly with Parmesan cheese and parsley for the others to taste. They are sublime.
Most side trips, however, are focused on more than food. Languedoc is rich in historical sites. In Narbonne, we view a small excavated section of the Via Domitia, the ancient road that linked Rome with Spain. Hannibal probably passed this way with his elephants to attack Rome in 218 B.C. We tour the fortified hilltop village of Minerve. A little museum with dioramas tells the grim tale of how the redoubt was besieged and captured in 1210 during a papal crusade against the region’s heretical Cathar Christians. Nearly everyone, including women and children, was slaughtered in the fighting or burned at the stake afterwards. Uli drives us to a hilltop to view a huge, strangely symmetrical depression in the land that stands out even from Earth orbit. It marks where a lake was drained around 1200 to eradicate mosquitoes. Local monks did this by digging a precise pie-shaped network of ditches that converge at the centre of an enormous circle, now planted in orchards and grape vines.
