I was expecting the spring decorating party of 1993 to be sizeable. Apart from those who had been before and who expressed interest in participating again, two ex work colleagues Dan and Bert were keen to come. Dan asked if it would be OK to bring his girlfriend Charlotte along. I could see no reason why not, so I readily agreed.
Strangely as the date of our departure approached and money needed to be committed for ticket purchases, everyone except for Dan, his girlfriend and Bert, suddenly found that work commitments prevented them from coming. This made me wonder if I was very poor company, or if I had previously made my guests work too hard. Perhaps it been the poor weather that we had encountered on previous trips that put them off. May be it was all of those things combined together.
We followed the now customary itinerary of taking the evening flight from Heathrow to Toulouse and then picking up a hire car for the late night drive to Frasquenet.
I allocated the front bedroom to Dan and Charlotte and the back bedroom to myself. Bert was allocated Sarah’s bunk bed in the windowless middle bedroom.
When I woke up in the morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my visitors were already up and about. They had already visited the boulangerie, so breakfast awaited me on the kitchen table. This was a first. Guests who rose earlier in the morning than I did, were a rare breed. It was agreed that given the visit was to last for four days, that we would spend the first two mornings decorating and cleaning and the remainder of the time exploring the area.
The plan was to give the living room one lick of white emulsion, give the kitchen a good cleaning, and to touch up the paintwork in the bedrooms and stairwell. It quickly became apparent that Charlotte had no plans to contribute to our work effort. She seemed to be sulking about something, but I never found out what. We worked and she sat at the kitchen table looking disinterested in what was going on around her, while holding a book. She might have been reading it, but from her expressionless face, it did not seem to be stirring her emotions.
Dan had bought a nice camera with a massive telephoto lens along with him. As a keen ornithologist he was hoping to capture some pictures of birds. The day was overcast and cool. I drove my companions first to Narbonne market to pick up some provisions, then to Capestang followed by the now familiar route following the Canal du Midi as far as Homps, before turning back to Frasquenet. Capestang looked particularly severe with the grim gargoyles on it’s church framed against the grey sky. The Canal du Midi was also less inspiring than usual, since the plane trees that lined it had not yet sprung their spring foliage. The main success was that Dan spotted several birds of prey. I doubt if he got very good pictures though, since they were circling far above our heads.
That evening we ate at one of the restaurants in the Rue De L’ancien Courriere in Narbonne. The meal was good although not up to the standard of the Restaurant Alsace. It seemed that Charlotte was determined to be miserable, since she complained about everything that was served to her. I was already wondering what Dan saw in her and was regretting that I had agreed to allowing her to join us.
Luckily Bert introduced an interesting topic into our conversation as we ate, which helped take my mind off the contrariness of Charlotte. He was fascinated by the history of the Cathars. I mentioned that a number of them had been burned not too far away to the north west, in the village of Minerve. Bert asked if we could visit it and also asked if on Monday we could go further afield to Montsegur. We finished off the evening with a nightcap in the nearby piano bar before returning to Frasquenet.
We all arose simultaneously the following morning on account of the church bells of Frasquenet calling the villagers to their Sunday service. To my surprise the skies were blue, the sun was shining and is was reasonably warm outside. Well before lunch time we had finished our chores. We drove west to Carcassonne. The sun had bought out more visitors than I had seen before at this time of year.
By now we were all hungry and I proposed that we try a cassoulet at one of the restaurants inside the cite itself. It did not take long to be served. It was pleasant and filling, but not quite as interesting as I had expected, given how much it is talked about in the region. I later discovered that there are a great many versions of cassoulet. While all cassoulets contain beans, the meat content can vary considerably. There is often some pork, lamb, chicken and Toulouse sausage, but versions including anything from duck to snails can also be found.
After Carcassone we drove North and East across country on mainly narrow roads to Minerve. We crossed the bridge on foot and walked around the village. We came to the stone that commemorated the 140 Cathars who had perished at the hands of Simon de Montfort there in the year 1210. The stone had a flying bird shaped hole carved right through it. Dan took several photos of the scenery and of us, through the bird shaped hole. Bert in turn then took a similar picture of Dan.
That evening we barbequed some chicken, sausages, aubegines and peppers in the courtyard back in Frasquenet. These were consumed along with a salad of tomatoes, lettuce and shallots. A couple of bottles of red Saint Chinian, which we had picked up during our travels that day, completed the menu. It was pleasant sitting out in the courtyard, but it was still too early in the year to spend the evenings sitting out in tee shirts and shorts, so we were all dressed in denim jeans and an assortment of woollen jumpers. For a change Charlotte seemed quite cheerful and even helped wash the dishes. I don’t know if Dan had spoken to her or if she had just come out of a menstruation, but from this point on she actually seemed to enjoy herself.
After breakfast we left Frasquenet at about 10:00am on the Monday morning. At Bert’s request our first planned port of call was going to be Montsegur, the most famous of the Cathar fortresses. After that I planned to take them all to Villefranche-de-Conflet, which had so impressed me on my previous visit.
We chose a scenic route along the D613 from Narbonne. Occasionally we made little detours from the main road, where the map indicated there were areas of outstanding natural beauty. From time to time I would stop the car so we could photograph the countryside.
The Road to Rennes le Chateau
After Arques, which was memorable because of its sandstone coloured tower, continuing Westwards towards Couiza, we noticed that the banks of the river had been damaged and various pieces of debris, including uprooted trees and large boulders, littered the river bed. When I spotted a sign to Rennes-les-Bains, I recalled having recently seen a TV news item in the UK, about serious floods in Italy and Southern France. Rennes-les-Bains had been one of the places experiencing a dramatic flash flood. I remembered images of a deep river bed with a few inches of water flowing along it, followed by the same scene where the water was rushing past having risen to a depth of 15 feet.
Within a few minutes, Bert started getting excited, having spotted a sign pointing to ‘Rennes-le-Chateau’. I’d never heard of it and it wasn’t on any agenda I was aware of. Eventually I was persuaded to reluctantly make a small detour to the village. My reluctance was because I knew that Villefranche was still a long way off given that we were first going to Montsegur. I was worried we might arrive there after sunset and the dramatic setting in the mountains would lose its impact.
Bert explained that much of the mystery surrounding Rennes-le-Chateau stems from it’s priest, Berenger Sauniere (Died 1917 aged 65), who became unaccountably rich after taking up residence in 1885. Bert advised me to read the best selling book ‘Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ by authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, which describes Sauniere’s life and offers a number of theories about how he came by his wealth.
One of the more exciting theories put forward is that he discovered the Cathar treasure, smuggled out of Montsegur shortly before it’s fall to hostile forces in 1244. This of course is just one of the theories and another set of theories revolves around what exactly the Cathar treasure was.
Regardless of the theories Sauniere certainly did pretty well for a Parish priest (of a very small Parish). He constructed the ‘Villa Bethania’ and the ‘Tower Magdala’, in which he housed his extensive and apparently expensive library.
We visited the Church where Bert pointed out a statue of the Devil and some of the other items which had apparently featured in the book. We then entered the small cemetery behind the church. One tomb appeared to have been vandalised, otherwise it was reasonably neat. We then took a walk around the village and took some photos of the surrounding countryside and the Tower Magdala, before heading off to Montsegur.
Before we arrived at our destination, we stopped once more for a late picnic lunch of delicious slices of black pepper encrusted sausage in buttered baquettes, and for a view of a ruined castle keep at Puivert.
By the time we spotted Montsegur itself, I had just one untaken picture on the film in my camera. Bert wanted to be photographed with the fortress in the background. So while Bert clutched the bottle of beer he was drinking, I snapped him with Montsegur high up on the mountain behind him. It later turned out that had I pointed the camera just a fraction lower, I would have got Bert, but would have chopped off Montsegur. It was lucky I had a steady hand and was observing my don’t drink and drive policy.
Mont Segur
Bert explained that Montsegur had been the last of the Cathar strongholds, it had fallen to catholic forces in 1244 and 220 Cathars who had refused to renounce their faith were burned. Apparently the Cathars did not believe in the resurrection of Christ and regarded the opulence of Catholic churches to be corrupt.
It was more than another two hours after leaving Montsegur that we made it to Villefranche. By now it was late afternoon and within an hour of arriving darkness had fallen. After a walk around the town we found a tavern where we had dinner. The place was quite rustic and so was the food, which was good since we were all in the mood for something warm and filling. Charlotte was joking and laughing along with the rest of us, I decided that I had judged her too harshly on the first couple of days.
The following day we made our way to Toulouse and the flight back to England, where my first action was to find a copy of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and read it.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail – US Kindle Verion
It was fascinating and I just regretted not having read it before our visit to the Cathar country. I felt a bit guilty about my obvious and not very graceful reluctance to make the detour to Rennes le Chateau, but also felt that my companions could have made the situation a whole lot better had they briefed me in advance about their plans.
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