It's the fort that counts Cathar country is peaceful today - but a crenellated skyline betrays its brutal past, says Jeremy Seal Sunday Times, 9/2/2003
A man in a straw hat was dozing in a tatty deckchair on the boxwood slopes below the crag-top castle of Queribus. He looked for all the world like a mispositioned cricket spectator until I noticed the ancient shotgun lying across his lap. He raised one eyelid to be sure that we were not wild boar before returning to his reverie with a smug smile. So much for the thrill of the chase.
As we foot-slogged through the garrigue, the herb-scented Mediterranean scrub of the hills, this hunter (if you could call him that) was letting the dogs do his work. The local hunting technique in the Fenouilledes says it all about life’s leisurely pace among these remote foothills of the French Pyrenees. Even in the autumn, when the average rural community is harvest-frantic (at least, if The Archers is to be believed), the gangs of workers picking heavy bunches of purple Syrah and Grenache grapes from the yellowing vines in the valleys were the only serious contenders in the Fenouilledes activity stakes. We walkers came a poor second and, as far as the robust local Roussillon and Corbieres wines permit me to recall, that was it, he of the dozy deckchair excepted.
We had no guide to lead us through these sparsely populated, slumbrous landscapes, but there were luggage transfers to keep our daypacks to a minimum, and pre-arranged lifts to the walk start on some mornings. We were provided with picnic lunches, and reliable walking directions which brought us at the end of each day to excellent lodgings, often pleasingly varied in style, though walls sagging with the stuffed heads of boars with huge tusks – the deckchair approach evidently paid off - did seem a regular fixture.
Our route was along footpaths, forestry tracks and country lanes, the valleys all vineyards and ancient villages with kitchen gardens, elderly women in black headscarves, high-sided and closely-packed houses deep in shadow, and the chime of church bells. The uplands smelt of thyme, lavender (and occasionally, I could have sworn, boar), but their real draw was the castles that topped them. Time and again, I raised my head from the first fallen leaves at my feet to be greeted by a crenellated skyline.
There was a time when these limestone hills tucked between Carcassonne and Perpignan had been, incredibly enough, all of a bustle. The border between France and Spain ran right through here until 1650. Now, these sublime fortifications – part garrison headquarters, lookout posts and sanctuaries - are all that remain of this one-time frontline fiercely contested by the counts and kings of Barcelona and Toulouse, Carcassonne and Paris. If castles are your thing, few are more spectacularly sited than Queribus, Peyrepertuse and Puilaurens; so much so that the very name of one of the local languages – Catalagne – derives from the word for ‘castle’.
Sleepy though these landscapes may be, they are also haunted by a past which has brought them more than a fair share of mayhem. These are the ancient heartlands of the Cathars, radical Christians who were extinguished in a Nazi-style persecution by the wrathful Catholics during the 1200s. Catharism, a spiritual and ascetic reaction to the excesses of the Roman church, saw the world as an eternal battle between the realms of good and evil. The Catholics saw the Cathars as heretics. There were widespread massacres, most notoriously at Beziers where some 20,000 souls were murdered, many of them burned at the stake. When asked how the town’s Catholics were to be distinguished from Cathars, the besieging commander declared, ‘Kill them all, God will recognize his own’.
The Cathars often sought sanctuary in these castles. Despite extensive modifications and improvements in subsequent centuries – the castles played vital roles as late as the 17th century - they remain primarily brooding monuments to the Cathars and to the ruthless destruction of a 13th century people and their beliefs. We began our walk below Puilaurens where a steep climb through ilex and juniper forest led to a bristling zig-zag of steep steps overlooked by high defensive walls, barbicans and keeps riddled with the slit windows of mediaeval archers. The payoff, worth all the panting, was giddying views south from the castle towards the high peaks of Spain and east down the valley towards the Mediterranean.
In the afternoon, we walked across hills where the footpaths were carpeted with pine cones. We joined a lane where hunters’ vans passed, leaving frogs, snakes and orange and black salamanders freshly tattooed against the tarmac, and walked to our lodgings at the village of Gincla on the edge of Boucheville Forest. In this handsome former manor house called the Hostellerie du Grand Duc, it hardly seemed to matter that the bedrooms were a decorative, Days Inn-style disaster since the dining room made up for it with evidence of a spectacular owl fetish; stuffed and porcelain owls, wooden and plastic owls, and pictures of owls. I ate succulent hare washed down with country red wine before retiring to sleep through the autumn rainstorm which swept down the valley.
And so we walked, tramping the heights and lodging in the valleys. At the Galamus Gorge, where a hermitage clings to the chasm’s steep sides, a recurrent lovelorn refrain – je t’aime – had been white-daubed across the road surface. There were figs, walnuts and almonds to be plucked from the roadside trees, and a great abundance of blackberries. As for the local and invariably home-produced cuisine, there was no sign of Cathar frugality here; sweet chestnut marmalade, goats’ cheeses, apricot flans, sparkling peach juices and blanquette, the cava-style wine from nearby Limoux and nougats. I particularly remember a sesame helva, though our hostess grandly dismissed it as ‘kaka de pigeon’.
One day’s walk ended at Soulatge, a hamlet assembled around a church amidst vineyards, where we lodged at La Giraudasse. Here, Katia Tiberghien and her husband Anibal have created a truly excellent chambre d’hote, with large, individual rooms, orchard gardens and an overall sense of style and conviviality complemented by the undisputed dinner of the week; a clove-flavoured casserole of home-reared, home-smoked duck. In the morning, the table was laden with a thicket of home-made jams; fig and blackcurrant, wild pear, nectarine and ginger.
Beyond the great castle complex of Peyrepertuse, perched on its precipitous limestone ridge, we lodged at the village of Cucugnan. In the morning, we set our boots in the direction of our final fortress, Queribus. There were skylarks above the path, and we could hear the distant baying of boarhounds. Just as the farmed valley floor gave way to scrub, a scarecrow supervised a final smallholding. He wore a baseball cap and jeans, anorak and stripey sweater, smoked a cigarette and held a sickle; a grim reaper for the Britpop generation.
Then we were climbing through gorse and broom. The castle stood on its own high bluff and was reached by a series of winding steps, with views to the south, of valleys and hills in apparently endless series. We explored the castle’s extensive interiors, with its great central chamber graced by a single stone pillar.
Our walk finished where Cathar resistance had ended; it was here at Queribus that the last of the Cathars had sought refuge. The castle was besieged by the Catholic forces in 1255, and when it fell after just three weeks, Catharism fell with it. Some 750 years later, we could see a couple of boarhounds far below snuffling in the scrub while their distant owner kipped in his chair. As we broke out the picnic - couscous, baguettes, cheese, chocolate and even a little red wine – it was as if the area’s dark history had given way to a contented present. That afternoon, the castle’s main terrace proved itself an irresistible sunspot.
The author was a guest of Inntravel (01653 629010; www.inntravel.co.uk). Their Castles of the Cathars independent walking holiday, available from the beginning of April to the end of October, costs from £688 per person (2003 prices available from Jan 2003), including 7 nights half board, 4 picnic lunches, luggage transportation, return flights and transfers.
Reading: The Rough Guide to Languedoc and Roussillon (£9.99).
As we foot-slogged through the garrigue, the herb-scented Mediterranean scrub of the hills, this hunter (if you could call him that) was letting the dogs do his work. The local hunting technique in the Fenouilledes says it all about life’s leisurely pace among these remote foothills of the French Pyrenees. Even in the autumn, when the average rural community is harvest-frantic (at least, if The Archers is to be believed), the gangs of workers picking heavy bunches of purple Syrah and Grenache grapes from the yellowing vines in the valleys were the only serious contenders in the Fenouilledes activity stakes. We walkers came a poor second and, as far as the robust local Roussillon and Corbieres wines permit me to recall, that was it, he of the dozy deckchair excepted.
We had no guide to lead us through these sparsely populated, slumbrous landscapes, but there were luggage transfers to keep our daypacks to a minimum, and pre-arranged lifts to the walk start on some mornings. We were provided with picnic lunches, and reliable walking directions which brought us at the end of each day to excellent lodgings, often pleasingly varied in style, though walls sagging with the stuffed heads of boars with huge tusks – the deckchair approach evidently paid off - did seem a regular fixture.
Our route was along footpaths, forestry tracks and country lanes, the valleys all vineyards and ancient villages with kitchen gardens, elderly women in black headscarves, high-sided and closely-packed houses deep in shadow, and the chime of church bells. The uplands smelt of thyme, lavender (and occasionally, I could have sworn, boar), but their real draw was the castles that topped them. Time and again, I raised my head from the first fallen leaves at my feet to be greeted by a crenellated skyline.
There was a time when these limestone hills tucked between Carcassonne and Perpignan had been, incredibly enough, all of a bustle. The border between France and Spain ran right through here until 1650. Now, these sublime fortifications – part garrison headquarters, lookout posts and sanctuaries - are all that remain of this one-time frontline fiercely contested by the counts and kings of Barcelona and Toulouse, Carcassonne and Paris. If castles are your thing, few are more spectacularly sited than Queribus, Peyrepertuse and Puilaurens; so much so that the very name of one of the local languages – Catalagne – derives from the word for ‘castle’.
Sleepy though these landscapes may be, they are also haunted by a past which has brought them more than a fair share of mayhem. These are the ancient heartlands of the Cathars, radical Christians who were extinguished in a Nazi-style persecution by the wrathful Catholics during the 1200s. Catharism, a spiritual and ascetic reaction to the excesses of the Roman church, saw the world as an eternal battle between the realms of good and evil. The Catholics saw the Cathars as heretics. There were widespread massacres, most notoriously at Beziers where some 20,000 souls were murdered, many of them burned at the stake. When asked how the town’s Catholics were to be distinguished from Cathars, the besieging commander declared, ‘Kill them all, God will recognize his own’.
The Cathars often sought sanctuary in these castles. Despite extensive modifications and improvements in subsequent centuries – the castles played vital roles as late as the 17th century - they remain primarily brooding monuments to the Cathars and to the ruthless destruction of a 13th century people and their beliefs. We began our walk below Puilaurens where a steep climb through ilex and juniper forest led to a bristling zig-zag of steep steps overlooked by high defensive walls, barbicans and keeps riddled with the slit windows of mediaeval archers. The payoff, worth all the panting, was giddying views south from the castle towards the high peaks of Spain and east down the valley towards the Mediterranean.
In the afternoon, we walked across hills where the footpaths were carpeted with pine cones. We joined a lane where hunters’ vans passed, leaving frogs, snakes and orange and black salamanders freshly tattooed against the tarmac, and walked to our lodgings at the village of Gincla on the edge of Boucheville Forest. In this handsome former manor house called the Hostellerie du Grand Duc, it hardly seemed to matter that the bedrooms were a decorative, Days Inn-style disaster since the dining room made up for it with evidence of a spectacular owl fetish; stuffed and porcelain owls, wooden and plastic owls, and pictures of owls. I ate succulent hare washed down with country red wine before retiring to sleep through the autumn rainstorm which swept down the valley.
And so we walked, tramping the heights and lodging in the valleys. At the Galamus Gorge, where a hermitage clings to the chasm’s steep sides, a recurrent lovelorn refrain – je t’aime – had been white-daubed across the road surface. There were figs, walnuts and almonds to be plucked from the roadside trees, and a great abundance of blackberries. As for the local and invariably home-produced cuisine, there was no sign of Cathar frugality here; sweet chestnut marmalade, goats’ cheeses, apricot flans, sparkling peach juices and blanquette, the cava-style wine from nearby Limoux and nougats. I particularly remember a sesame helva, though our hostess grandly dismissed it as ‘kaka de pigeon’.
One day’s walk ended at Soulatge, a hamlet assembled around a church amidst vineyards, where we lodged at La Giraudasse. Here, Katia Tiberghien and her husband Anibal have created a truly excellent chambre d’hote, with large, individual rooms, orchard gardens and an overall sense of style and conviviality complemented by the undisputed dinner of the week; a clove-flavoured casserole of home-reared, home-smoked duck. In the morning, the table was laden with a thicket of home-made jams; fig and blackcurrant, wild pear, nectarine and ginger.
Beyond the great castle complex of Peyrepertuse, perched on its precipitous limestone ridge, we lodged at the village of Cucugnan. In the morning, we set our boots in the direction of our final fortress, Queribus. There were skylarks above the path, and we could hear the distant baying of boarhounds. Just as the farmed valley floor gave way to scrub, a scarecrow supervised a final smallholding. He wore a baseball cap and jeans, anorak and stripey sweater, smoked a cigarette and held a sickle; a grim reaper for the Britpop generation.
Then we were climbing through gorse and broom. The castle stood on its own high bluff and was reached by a series of winding steps, with views to the south, of valleys and hills in apparently endless series. We explored the castle’s extensive interiors, with its great central chamber graced by a single stone pillar.
Our walk finished where Cathar resistance had ended; it was here at Queribus that the last of the Cathars had sought refuge. The castle was besieged by the Catholic forces in 1255, and when it fell after just three weeks, Catharism fell with it. Some 750 years later, we could see a couple of boarhounds far below snuffling in the scrub while their distant owner kipped in his chair. As we broke out the picnic - couscous, baguettes, cheese, chocolate and even a little red wine – it was as if the area’s dark history had given way to a contented present. That afternoon, the castle’s main terrace proved itself an irresistible sunspot.
The author was a guest of Inntravel (01653 629010; www.inntravel.co.uk). Their Castles of the Cathars independent walking holiday, available from the beginning of April to the end of October, costs from £688 per person (2003 prices available from Jan 2003), including 7 nights half board, 4 picnic lunches, luggage transportation, return flights and transfers.
Reading: The Rough Guide to Languedoc and Roussillon (£9.99).
