Blogs from Carcassonne, Languedoc-Roussillon, France, Europe - page 7

Sorry its been a few days since I last updated the blog. Travelling rural France has its downsides, lack of internet cafe's in quaint villages and the price of beer. The train trip from Barca to Perpignan was short with no mishaps. We sat next to 3 Venezuelan chaps travelling Europe during their US summer break from college in the US. Pretty normal fellows - not that there is anything wrong with South Americans. Talking to them reminded me how similar their countries situation is to Zimbabwe's with Hugo Chavez the Robert Mugabe of South America. I digress. France and a car for 8 whole days!!!!!! The timing is perfect to give our weary legs a long rest. The usual sign language and broken English later we received the keys for a left hand drive diesel ... read more

The trip to Carcassonne was quite an adventure. We headed out at around 5pm from Avignon, and found that the French trains were having another of their wonderfully selective (read: only us) strikes so the train we wanted wasn’t running. So, we had to take a bus to the high-speed train lines to catch a train that didn’t arrive until 3 hours later. Great. At least the station was nifty, all futuristic and such. And we somehow met the same honest peddler-- “can you give me… three, five, seven euro for beer tonight?”—we met on the train from Nice. The train had no empty seats, even though we paid extra to reserve seats (I couldn’t bring myself to kick the old lady in my seat out). It did thin out after we went through Marseilles, thankfully, ... read more

Wednesday 21st May Marion went to collect the car from the underground car park she had left it in the last couple of nights to find it effectively "parked in". With Owen's aid in alerting her to the distance between her car and the others, she inched the car back a few millimetres, shoved the steering wheel around to opposite lock, inched the car forward a few millimetres, shoved the steering wheel around to opposite lock... You get the idea. The first section of the drive from Carcassonne took us back to where the road from the North that had taken us from Millau met this one. We resisted the urge to head North and re-acquaint ourselves with the bridge and instead continued on the road travelling East. At first this new area was all scrubby ... read more

Monday 19th May On the way to Carcassonne we got to travel across the viaduct again. The view of the bridge is almost as breathtaking when you are on it as when you're at one of the specially located viewpoints. The only downside is that the railings on the bridge (which I'm sure are built for safety) totally obscure any view of the valley on both sides. The landscape on the far side of the viaduct was a stark contrast to the lush vegetation around Millau. The land was covered with rocky scree and dotted with an occasional large boulder. Some very small (maximum size around half a metre) struggling bushes were the only visible vegetation. As we slowly lost height the landscape changed again. Larger bushes appeared and there were less areas of bare rock. ... read more

In the hills of southern France we found our next destination, the historic walled city of Carcassonne. The Romans first fortified the hill in Carcassonne around 100BC and the fortifications were expanded over the years. The fortified city that had been built up over the years became a centerpiece of the crusades to wipe out the cathars of the area. The city and battlements were expanded over the years and the city became a vital military outpost along the boarder with Spain. In the 1800's the city was put up to be demolished, but after some heavy campaigning the city was saved. The architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc was brought in to renovate the city and all of the old town was restored to reflect the way the city looked in the middle ages. Before we could get ... read more