54 miles
Keeping the blog up to date has proved much trickier than I has envisaged. I imagined that more or less in any campsite these days free Wifi would be accessible on the pitch. This is simply not the case. Here, for example, you need to lug your laptop to the foyer by reception in order to connect. However, this morning a whisper of a wifi signal was accessible from the van, it was slow and intermittent, but with perseverance I did manage to upload all of the posts to date and post some photographs. It is the photos that take the time, so if there is a time lag between the written posts and pictures, so be it. Also, it's not always possible to proof read accurately on the hoof, so if a few howlers end up needing to be straightened out afterwards, then I think I'll just have to live with that too.
Anyway, between cleaning the Cadac and fiddling with the blog it was after 11 o'clock before we exited Camping Montolieu. A great little site, everything that you'd expect from a French family run camping: friendly owners, clean facilities with hot water on demand, well hedged generous pitches, informal ambience - tres bien.
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| Camping Montolieu - a great little site |
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| The Republic of the Recently Retired Congress |
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| Montelieu, looking stunniing... after all the rude things I said about the place! |
The light is just astonishing at the moment. The mistral has washed the sky clean. As the autumn colours deepen the sky has become an ever darker blue. As we pulled out of the valley, across a plain of russet brown vines, in the blue distance you could just discern the spiky peaks of the Pyrenees. Then down to earth with a bump - the Carcassonne ring road during the 12.10 rush.
On to Limoux for lunch, we parked the van at the aire, ate the usual bread, ham and cheese, sorted out Maisy at the service point then headed into centre ville for the ritual noisette. We recalled the town from a previous visit to the Corbieres on a camping trip with the kids, almost twenty years ago. We have some video of us all wandering around Limoux's old, arcaded market square , the shadows deep under the hot summer sun. We remembered an ornate fountain with cupids spouting water from their mouths and an ornate, half naked figure of Liberté crowning the ensemble. Not something you'd be likely to find in an English market square, in Thirsk or Ludlow. Back then, to us Southern Europe seemed strange and exotic, a trifle risqué even.
Little had changed in Limoux, except the fountain no longer spouted water and some failed restoration project had covered the lovely bronze statues in a thick turquoise coloured protective paint. All the subtlety in the original sculptures had gone, they just looked faintly kitch. What a shame.
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| Limoux's 'plasticised' fountain |
Half the square was carpeted in flowers. The local stall holders were cashing-in big style on the forthcoming Toussant, the moment when the French, en-masse seize a tub of chrysanthemums and head for the cemetery to remember their dearly departed, followed of course by a big family lunch. A civilised habit I think, and one which must have its roots in pagan ancestor worship, now Christianised.
Limoux itself is an interesting looking place. Just glancing in the immobilier window it's clear that in this area property is somewhat less expensive than in other parts of Mediterranean France. Consequently the area would seem to have developed a fair population of expat Northern Europeans. Judging from the floaty flowered maxi skirts and be-trilbied bearded chaps wandering about, the town seems to be a magnet for the creatively inclined.
We are heading back towards the coast near Perpignan over the next couple of days, then crossing into Spain. The road south takes us through the heart of the Corbiere, following the upper reaches of l'Aude. After Limoux the D119 climbs steeply. The villages assume a more severe, upland appearance. At Quillan, we checked out an aire. It was in the station car park, a bit too public for our liking, so we pressed on. The next part of the route goes through the gorges of the l'Aude. The Defile de Pierre-Lys is a series of vertiginous cliffs. The road is carved into the side of these, a concrete wall on one side protecting traffic from the vertical drop, overhanging rocks and arches with height restrictions creating a hazard on the other. You just have to hold your nerve for the eight of so kilometres of the Defile, and occupy the middle of the road where height is restricted and hope the oncoming traffic gives way.
I was glad to reach the aire a few kilometres further on in the small mountain village of Lapradelles It is situated next to the Centre de Secours, with room for about six vans, though on fact only three of the bays are level enough to ensure a comfortable night. Luckily there were only three vans using it.
Like many of the valleys hereabouts the crag, high above the village is crowned with a ruined castle. These hills were the last sanctuary of the Cathars, a thirteenth century sect deemed heretical by the papacy. The so called 'Albigensian Heresy' was brutally expunged by forces backed by the Vatican, and one by one these remote fortresses were starved into submission and their occupants killed brutally. The Middle Ages may seem distant but we don't really learn, the current schism within Islam provokes similar brutality, and before we point the blame at other cultures, we should recall recent European history - Northern Ireland and Bosnia - and the holocaust itself is barely more than one generation ago. These Cathar castles seem sad, haunted places, perhaps because the religious wars they recall are not some distant memory, but still with us and maybe always will be.
We did not climb to the castle. After following some signs up a minor road through a small gorge we reached the footpath. It estimated it would take twenty minutes, but was steep and shingly. It was late afternoon, and in sandals the path would have been too hazardous. At night the castle is flood lit, and the white limestone crags it stands on illuminated in a spooky green light. It's all a bit Scoobydoo for my taste, I think it trivialises the monument, and like the Limoux fountain, borders on the kitch.
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| The road up to the castle |
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| we stopped at the point where the path headed upwards, near vertically |
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| Gill...rocks! |
When we returned to the van we got chatting to the Dutch couple next door. They were in the final stages of a seven week tour that had taken in Western France, Northwest Spain and Portugal, across the Iberian Peninsula, and then via the Costa Brava and into Languedoc. To date they had clocked up 6000 kilometres. Given that this was a hire van and the chap had never driven a motorhome before you have to admire their energy and nerve. There was a romantic aspect to it too. They were partly retracing a journey they had made together when they were younger, forty years ago, around Europe in a Mini.
Gill always tries to pick up some tips about places to stay from people we meet, and they are always pleased to help, because we all like to talk about 'our tour', and if there is no one there to listen, well we just blog about it to empty cyberspace! The sites they recommended were in Northern Spain, not helpful now, but maybe so next Spring, on our homeward leg.
It's funny how some aires are just friendlier than others. Next morning an English couple from the other van stopped for a chat. They too were heading home, not far for them, they had settled down just north of Bordeaux. Then while we were at the service point a French can drew up. He offered to fill our water tank with his long hose, a nice friendly gesture. His wife joined us and enthused about 'Espagne', in a husky broken English, pre-breakfast cigarette in hand. She had the look of being a real party animal, and briefly I imagined her as being eternally at the head of a never-ending conga dance!
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