Near Fajoles, which is near Gourdon, Lot, France

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This is the third of three I’m posting this evening. As usual, scroll down and read from the bottom up to get them in order. Posting has proven time-consuming, due to the unreliable nature of the various wi-fi connections I’ve depended on; it’s not like being at home. In particular, posting photos here is crazy-slow, so I’m putting pics mainly on picasa, which seems to upload much faster.

I’m enjoying the writing part of this, it’s just the posting that’s a big pain.

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August 1, 2010

Les Prinquieres

It feels like much more than four days since I last wrote. We’ve covered a lot of ground, in more ways than one.


The air is close, tepid, like a bath gone cool after a long soak. My bit of laundry, hung this morning, still drips. The dishes in the rack since breakfast have yet to dry. A still, grey sky, lush tobacco fields, silence. These walls could sweat.

It feels strange to be indoors, after much of the last three weeks spent outside. I could sit out at the table on the gravel terasse, but the chairs are wet after today’s showers. Maybe later I’ll take a towel to them, and watch the stars come up.

We arrived here yesterday afternoon after a leisurely drive from Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. The gites is a farmstead, or once was, consisting of a handful of buildings: the owners’ house, the converted barn divided into three small apartments, a small (also converted) cabin, a slant-roofed shed and a “hangar”—an open garage for the owners’ cars and tractor. There are traces of old stone walls that start and stop, a rusty plow once horse-drawn, hedges, fruit trees and acres of mown grass. There is a fenced swimming pool, a boules court, a place to play badminton. We have yet to venture much onto the grounds; we eat inside, then go to the car to explore the region. I did hang some clothes (a useless exercise) out on the line by the hangar.

The apartment itself is better-outfitted than I expected. Sue and Derek, the owners, have thought of everything, including inventorying it all in a booklet just for this apartment, right down to the coasters and wooden spoons. (I wish I could scan the list!)

A pigeon hoots a syncopated song. Who would have known?

So. I’m behind. I’ll be bouncing around a bit in time. For now, back to the day we left Collioure….

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Collioure to Carcasonne

We left Collioure on that brilliant Wednesday morning, after I’d spent the second morning in a row on the deck of our room, writing and watching the town wake up. We drove south a bit, toward the Spanish border, on the “high road”, which affords some of the most spectacular views of the Vermillion Coast. I think we only did about half of it, realizing later we could have gone further, but it was enough to get the gist: rolling hills of patchwork vineyards, the so-blue Mediterranean sparkling beyond.

We headed, then, into Cathar country. There were two medieval fortresses I wanted to visit: Queribus and Peyrepertuse.

Well. I may have mentioned this: months ago, I bought the Michelin map book for France (Michelin maps are the only way to go, in France and maybe in all of Europe), which has a scale of 1:200,000, or 1 cm = 2 km, or 1 inch = 3.16 miles (for my American friends). The book is heavy, so I tore out the pages we wouldn’t need. This tome is our best friend in the front seat.

We EAT the map, when we drive. If there is a curve in the road, it shows on the Michelin map. If there is a village of two houses that actually has a name, it’s there on the Michelin map. You get the picture.

It ought to have been enough. But last year, when we took a road trip through the American southwest, we got lost once or twice, and lost hours of travel time. We bought a GPS in a Costco somewhere in Utah, and have learned to love it. So we bought the GPS map for France, thinking it would save us in a pinch.

It has. Really. It’s absolutely the best thing for getting us out of cities. Getting us TO places has been a slightly different story. Out of Collioure, I set the GPS to get us to Queribus. She (it has a woman’s voice, so I tend to call it “her”, and since she is quite curt, I haven’t bonded to her, and have been known to call her nasty names at times) instructed us to leave the highway some distance south of Perpignan. That was fine, since negotiating Perpignan looked like a potential headache. We ended up on a tiny road. The tiniest of roads. We zigzagged and switched back through olive groves and vineyards, and had we met another car face on, I don’t know which one of us would have been obliged to back up for several kilometers to make way. We were passed, at widenings in the road, by three cars in the course of an hour. We assumed they had GPS’s too. We had no choice but to continue following instructions. We saw things we never would have otherwise seen. We filmed some of it, and managed to capture cicadas on the sound track.
When we finally emerged onto the main thoroughfare, I shut the GPS down. I remembered reading an online travel blog about a couple who had followed their GPS instructions down miles and miles of unpaved roads in France, only to have to turn around. I would say, now, that American-generated GPS maps work exceptionally well in North America, but not so well elsewhere. It could be due to the proliferation of roads here. Every track that was ever carved by wagon is now paved and numbered; to get from one village to the neighbouring village, one has to choose between three routes. Our GPS seems not to distinguish between wagon tracks and major highways.

Anyhow. Back to the journey.

We found Queribus, using the Michelin map, because French routes are very well marked. Queribus. She stood like a monolith against the sky. The first thought is, “How did they possibly get their materials up there to build in the first place?” (It had to have been the aliens!!) The second, “How are WE going to get up there now?”

Remarkably, the road leads right to the base of the cliff upon which the fortress is built. There is a kiosk at the parking lot, selling books (some excellent histories, in English!), souvenirs and ice cream (what more do you need?). We got the audio guide in English and headed up the path. The audio guide was a delightfully useless bit of fluff, a heavily-accented man proclaiming how lucky he was to see this marvel of ancient architecture. We climbed. A gravel path, then stone stairs. Up and up and into the fortress itself. The outer walls are considerably decayed, but the keep (“le donjon”) has been restored, and a narrow spiral staircase takes you to the top. If you have the nerve, which I don’t. I used to be fearless, but now I get vertigo in high places. Queribus was difficult, not for the climb but for the height. I had to keep my eyes on my feet. The little spiral staircases were too much for me; I tried but gave up. It seemed to me that the few extra meters of height would make little difference to the view, so it was okay not to reach the top.

The best part, for me, is imagining the people who went before me, back almost a thousand years. How did they bring water? What was THEIR experience, looking out at ridge beyond ridge in the haze, watching north for signals from Peyrepertuse and south from the next tower, visible on the horizon. I am still not sure why they built these massive fortresses, but I do know they became obsolete when the French-Spanish border was moved considerably south of here. Between the building and obsolescence, they changed hands a number of times, sometimes bequeathed by Lords, such as the Count de Foix, who had no right to them in the first place. They were considered military prizes, boasting points, I suppose.

From Queribus, we headed for Peyrepertuse, supposed to be the best of all the high strongholds. We stopped along the way at Cucugnan to pick up cheese and bread for lunch. It was a picturesque hilltop village, baking beneath the stone windmill at its summit. We found a bit of shade on what passed for a town square, and made sandwiches.

John tackled the narrow switchbacks (while I closed my eyes) up to the site of Peyrepertuse. Again, a dusty parking lot, and a kiosk with postcards for purchase. The path to the top was through shady woods, and led completely around the peak. We had no view of the fortress as we climbed, but the shade was welcome, and the incline relatively gentle. When we emerged, there we were at the walls of the ancient site, at the top of a ridge that hangs over the valleys below and extends for miles.

There was a sign, as we entered, that there would be a falconry exhibition at 4:00. It was ten to four—nice timing. We found the site for the exhibition, at the edge of a cliff, and sat on stones to watch. The falconrists (is that the right way to say it?) were a father and two sons. One of the sons looked like my son, Simon, who has an interest in all things medieval, including falconry; it turned out this young man’s name was also Simon. The father was the master of the exhibition, a great showman, and explained in detail the history and technique of falconry. It was a time when I wished my French was better, because, in truth, I’m pretty good in a restaurant, but when the language is flying by my ears, I understand only fragments of what I hear. (More on this in a later blog.) Between John and myself, however, we got the idea. It didn’t matter. The birds were what mattered. First there were the falcons, a female, then a male. Then a buzzard of some sort, blue-headed and spooky. Then a blue-beaked bird I can’t identify, then a bald eagle. It was amazing how these men communicated with their birds, how the birds would fly off for great distances, but return with a call or a signal. Why would a wild bird not choose freedom? There was certainly a choice.

I took several dozen photos of the event, and I was right up front, so I got some good shots. The pictures say it all, really.





The falconry event took about a half hour, after which we decided we were satisfied, even without having explored the site completely, so we headed down through the shady woods to the car, and drove, without the help of the back-roads GPS, to Carcasonne.

*****

Les Prinquieres

John rented a guitar today, a lucky find from a just-opened shop. He has been off in the woods, writing a song all in French, in the style of the new-medieval bands we’ve been seeing.

We just took a walk around the perimeter of this property. It’s cool out, and silent. We have neighbours, but they are ensconced in their amber-lit spaces; we got a wave from another couple also out on a walk.

*****

Carcasonne

We entered Carcasonne with the aid of GPS. She did well for us until the final few blocks, when she brought us to essentially nothing, then redirected us back to essentially nothing. I had a sense of where our hotel was, so I turned off the GPS, followed the Google map I’d printed, and brought us to the Hotel Montmorency, just outside the walls of La City, the medieval city of Carcasonne.

Pretty spiffy place. A short-term parking for people checking in. A patio, an open foyer. I presented myself as usual at the desk: “Nous avons un reservation….” The young woman at the desk could not find my reservation. She asked if we had a confirmation, so I returned to the car and retrieved it (lesson: print your confirmations!). She read it and said “C’est incroyable!” (“That’s incredible.”) She looked again through her records, and repeated, “C’est incroyable!” She brought out a huge black binder full of confirmations and leafed through it. Found mine. “C’est incroyable!” She finally claimed that she had given our room to someone else, but no problem, there was a room for us…. We didn’t really care, as long as we had a room. It did strike us as poor business that the “best” hotel we had booked was the only one to “lose” our reservation; John was livid, actually. At last, we received a key, a code for parking, and we were on our way. The foyer of the Montmorency (which is the second, lower-priced part of a two-hotel complex) is a bizarre 60s-style composite of black-and-white with purple hassocks. Wish I had taken a photo, but I know Susan has one from when she stayed two years ago. The hallways, too, were 60s pop. I expected to run into Twiggy. Our room, however, was another story. A beautiful yellow Provencal wallpaper with a red floral pattern, matched by red drapes with yellow flowers—matching. The bathroom was ultra-modern. and the deck was fin-de-siecle (nineteenth, that is). The contrasts worked.

We unloaded, and headed into La Cité. Disney took a page from La Cité. It’s about as inspiring in faux medieval as you’re going to get. It’s gorgeous, a bit fake, but a wonderful place in which to succumb to romantic fantasy. We, however, were hungry. We found a place just off the main tourist square (which was absolutely nuts), and ordered off the “menu”. The food was decent, the waiter was funny and the ambience was unbeatable from our table on the street. The only distracting thing was a traffic light, necessary to control the flow of traffic through a curving lane wide enough for a single car.

During dinner, the music started: Guantanamera, from the square we’d avoided. And another Latin pop classic, and another.

After dinner we went for a walk, a tour of La Cité. Rock music began to echo off the stone. We walked, and it grew louder. Finally, we found the park behind the cathedral, and a concert by Motorhead. I remembered Susan talking about hearing Diana Ross from behind the gates. I’m thinking Diana Ross would not be so bad! We wandered by the cathedral and down medieval lanes to the noise of Motorhead. When the concert let out, at 11:00, the fans streamed peacefully through the narrow streets, all dressed up in Motorhead t-shirts.

The disconnect was just too much for us, so we headed back to the contradictions of our hotel, and to sleep. We had no desire to return into La Cité in the morning, so we hit the road for Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. GPS got us reliably out of town before we turned her off.


Carcasonne:






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