Day 49: Castelnaudary to Carcassonne

October 14, 2023

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The Maison du Cassoulet closed out its mediocre performance for us by asking way too much for its proposed one jammer French breakfast. So we sailed off in search of a bakery or grocery, where we would get more for less. We took note as we left of one of the menu items on offer for evening, which is shown below. For most of these items, frankly, they would have to pay us, rather than the reverse. But the frites, and dessert did sound good!

I rather thought our bakery search would include a quick sweep through the town centre, but Dodie had been lured by an Intermarche that popped up on her GPS, at the edge of town. Intermarche means salad for later in the day, and vegetables of any sort are a bonus here. Note for instance how about 40 euros in the menu above did not buy any real vegetable component.

We beetle though town in search of salad.

The outskirts of town did produce the Intermarche, but it was still closed. so we hopped over to a combo Marie Blachere bakery / fruit and vegetable store. Marie Blachere is a chain, but like the Paul bakeries it still manages very high quality. Dodie came out with chicken and veggie sandwiches on baguette, plus a pile of sweet buns - chocolate chip circles, brioche, and brioche pralines. We ended with a lot because of Marie Blachere clever marketing - buy 3 get the 4th free. They also have a 50% off in the last 30 minutes of the day deal, but one would have to live nearby to time that.

I went into the fruit store for a peek, and when I came out I found that Dodie had attracted a store customer who had come by bike, and who had already run though the UQs. Interestingly, by the time I go there the conversation had progressed beyond the UQs and on to the philosophy of travelling by bike, and beyond that to general philosophy of life, and world peace - what we may now define as the UPQs - the Usual Philosophical Questions. The thing about UQs for me is that I already know all the usual words and themes that come up, and am fairly able to carry such conversation in French. But UPQ is much tougher, and may range deep into the visitor's personal thinking and life experience. I was impressed that Dodie seemed to be following and responding to this one. But later she acknowledged she was hoping I would say "We gotta go". I had held off on that because one of the themes of the UPQ had been "What's the rush? You can enjoy life as much right here as miles down the road". Another

Another feature of the outskirts of town was the presence of rather large cassoulet outlets, like the one below. You really can fill your boots with cassoulet in this town.

Based on our own past blogs, we knew we did not want to try the Canal du Midi for getting to Carcassone. We had been burned too much by single track mud on there before to go anywhere near it. Consequently we got on the D33, which is a direct road connection. D33 was a little hairy, but not really so bad. I definitely was running my taillight on flash for it, as one indicator. And there was the usual chance to observe the idiocy of drivers, the ones that go too fast, pass too close, and duck and weave down the highway. These fortunately were not more plentiful than usual.

D33 in a quiet moment. Riding the dotted line in France - a common occurrence.

On D33 we began to notice hills in the distance on all sides. Must be the Pyrenees foothills to the right and the Massif Centrale to the left. We are content to be right here, in the middle.

Our route on D33 took us through two Cathar villages, before Carcassone. Catharism, the Albigenisan Cruscade, and Inquisition are the most formative elements of the history of this part of the country. The Cathars were a sect of Christianity that was centred at Albi, although the roots can be traced to Bulgaria and/or the Byzantine empire. The Cathars seemed to believe in two gods - a good one and a bad one (which seems similar to the "standard" belief in Satan). However Pope Innocent III viewed this as a heresy, being contrary to monotheism, and in the early 1200's began sending emissaries to straighten the people here out. When one of these was murdered while returning to Rome, having excommunicated the Count of Toulouse for being soft on Catharism, the Pope declared the dead emmisary a martyr and launched a full on Crusade to wipe out the Cathars. This was known as the Albigensian Crusade, and began in 1209. The Crusade was organized from the north, under the French king, and gathered 10,000 knights in Lyon. They went to Beziers and massacred the place and moved onto siege and quickly capture Carcassone, after which all neighbouring towns fell quickly. A guy called Simon de Montfort took over the crusader army and continued rampaging about, also becoming count of Toulouse. We were to see a lot more about all this as we continued to Carcassonne. This is lots more to this whole story, which one can appreciate just from the fact that the dates for the crusade are given as 1209-1229.

Our first village was Pexiora. We learned that this was founded in the 12 century, basically by Knights Templar. But they got blown away by the Crusade, the leadership dispossessed, and had control passed to Toulouse and the French king thereafter. On the other hand, sure looks like the Knights Templar cross now on the screen by the church door!

By the way, by 1355 Pexiora was doing quite well, and could afford to pay tribute to the Black Prince to avoid getting pillaged. Remember the Black Prince? we met him elsewhere in this blog!

Overview of Pexiora, an interesting stop off the D33.

After Pexiora we encountered some very large vineyards, sitting on the flat. We were puzzled to see that now it was not just a matter of grapes turning to raisins on the vine, but they have just totally fallen off. It sure looks like it was decided that it was not worth harvesting.

Our next town was Bram. Though nothing like hugely fortified Carcassonne, it was built with an interesting circular pattern - a circular wall around the church at first, with circular streets within, followed by two successive expansions of the circular walls, and additional circular streets. Today from above anyway, the town looks like this:

A lot of the circular development at Bram started early in the 13th century, and the rulers put their chateau inside the wall, adjacent to the church. However the town fell to the Crusade in 1210, within 3 days. At that time Simon de Montfort cut off the noses and gouged out the eyes of a hundred villagers, leaving one with one eye, to guide the others to Lastours, to encourage those folks to capitulate.

The church at Brams had some interesting features. There were painted columns, making us think that design like that is a southern France thing. There were also statues of some of our "old favourite" saints - Saint Roch, and Jeanne d'Arc. Saint Roch, being the patron of pilgrims is legitimately wearing a coquille St Jacques, though usually those are reserved for St Jacques himself. Catholic iconography can sometimes be hard to figure.

Really nice rose window, as they all are.

St Anthony, with columns. St Anthony is always holding a child, but he is not the patron of orphans or anything, the child is a baby Jesus.

Some bits of wall:

Eventually D33 crossed over the Canal du Midi. This allowed us to see the bike path beside. We observe that it has been upgraded from dirt to gravel. That could actually be cyclable. But we stuck to D33, and cruised easily to Carcassonne.

Here along the way was yet another stink bug. It's a pretty good photo, but Dodie says "Nobody wants to see a stink bug". Come on folks, give this guy a break and hand him a "like" for his photo!

When I said we cruised easily on D33, that did not mean it was all rest and relaxation!

Carcassonne has two very distinct parts, on either side of the river Aude. To the west is the old but "normal" city and to the east, up on a hill, is the highly fortified "City". The "City" is the bit with the walls and towers, and parts that still look exactly as they did in the 11th century. However the west side of the river town itself has lots of atmosphere. Most streets there are extremely narrow, though there is at least one broad boulevard and several large squares. Coming from Castelnaudary in the west, on D33, we naturally landed first in the west of the river old town.

This broad boulevard was just finishing a large dry goods market.

But we were soon in to the very narrow streets.

Our hotel is on one of the narrow streets. But our room is quite large and clean, with a huge balcony.

After dropping our bikes and getting set up in the room, about 2 p.m., we set off on foot for the "City". It's a 7 km hike, there and back.

The main shopping street of the western town.

A large square, Place Carnot, with fountain and lots of outdoor restaurant space.

Rue Courtejaire, with the city gate at the end

There turned out to be better and more accessible ice cream up in the City, and we waited until we got there. This shot does show some of the flavour types in this town, like violet and the very popular mango. The mango I eventually got had fruit chunks in it.

These are the standard prices we have encountered throughout France.

This tea towel shows cheeses by location. A cheese tour of Europe is still "fermenting" in our heads.

This is the door to the Our Lady of Good Health chapel, which says it is a starting point for St Jacques pilgrimage. Yet we could find no stamp inside.

The 1578 Pont Neuf is the way to cross the river on foot. It feels very appropriate to approach the medieval city on this stone bridge.

Before climbing to the City, we passed the Notre Dame de l'Abbaye church. This is the oldest christian site in Carcassonne, dating from the 10th century or before. It was destroyed in the siege of 1240, in the Wars of Religion, and the Revolution. However it survived the Grampies, who stayed here in 2018. The building itself is nothing to look at, but a wall along one side is decorated with historically based murals. Explanatory shields contain some now familiar names or info, like Simon de Montfort, or the Dominicans, who got their start working to wipe out Cathars. We recorded a little of it:

We are now ready to walk up into the City. What we will immediately see is swarms of tourists, attending scads of restaurants and like us, buying ice cream. There are tourist shops with postcards and shops with toy knight's costumes or swords. It was all great fun. We are going in by the Porte Narbonnaise and leaving by the Port d'Aude. Let's walk:

So we have seen some crowds, some restaurants, and some toy swords. We have now arrived at the church up here. It has really good stained glass, and lots of gargoyles.

9th century St Nazaire and St Celse Basilica

Not a gargoyle but a small carving up on a wall

St Antoine. I was explaining about who this is to a nearby lady that was wondering. Am I becoming an authority?

For 325 euros you can stay right up here in the castle.

This building is called The Bakery, but we did not check to see if there are really croissants in there.

We set about leaving, by the Aude gate?

They say don't risk walking on these outer battlements.

Really impressive. But the town fell in the crusade when the water was cut off.

We are back on the west side of the Aude now (left bank). We learned that the Crusade did not appreciate an attempt to retake the castle, originating from here, and had this side destroyed. So nothing here will be older than from 1262!

Of interest today is not Crusades but Rugby. We were in Germany when they won the World Cup of Football. Maybe France will win now at rugby? Here is the schedule:

There is lots of action on screen, but we have no idea about it. Bring on the hockey!

Finally coming down a main street, a flash from the past, for us, some Krishna people. Dodie made the ID first, as they have somewhat changed their chant. I think the new version is jazzier, don't like it. If we have a thousands of year old tradition, should we change the chant every 50 years, just like that? Anyway, they were still lots of fun!

ubi

Crossing the Aude, and through the old "City"

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Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 2,545 km (1,580 miles)

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Janice BranhamThanks for the Cathar History lesson Steve. It's great context for our visit to Carcassonne a couple weeks ago, and our next stop in Valencia.
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