Day 43 of our 'virtual 'bike ride. Narbonneto Carcassonne. 21.9 miles

---

Very Spring like this morning when the sun was shining and you were sheltered from the wind and then Arctic like when into the very strong wind! Our route was to Whalley via Mitton, Billington, Wiswell, Pendleton, Barriw, Whalley and home via Mitton.



Our virtual journey would be leaving Narbonne and starting our journey westwards. The start of our day is flat through vine yards with Chateau sat on hilltops. As lunch time approached we said we would stop at the next bench we found in some shade. It was another hour and a half before we found any shade, in the tiny village of Montlaur dominated by the most enormous school building. As the day goes on the route becomes quite hilly with some steep climbs and long descents.



Our destination is Carcassonne which from afar looks like a fairy tale medieval city. It is famous for its medieval citadel, La Cité, with numerous watchtowers and double-walled fortifications. Once inside the fortified walls it is very touristy and busy being the second most visited place in France. It was the location for 'Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves' staring Kevin Costner in 1991 and this fairytale collection of drawbridges, towers and atmospheric cobbled streets was reputedly the inspiration for Walt Disney’s The Sleeping Beauty. Its medieval core, the cité, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1997. The cities defenses are the culmination of many centuries of fortifications built on this spot by the Gauls, Roman's, Visigiths, Mors and Frank's. In the thirteenth century they served as one of the major strongholds of the Cathars.



Our first flight home with bikes was from Carcassonne. The airport was so small we personally handed over the bikes to the baggage handler who then put them on the plane. That was by far our easiest and least stressful airport trip. Not all airport trips have been so easy. In our experience the smaller the airport the better.



Carthars :

Catharism - meaning litterally purity - was a sort of proto- Protestantism that promoted values of equality, neighbourliness and charity, and turned its back on the pomp, hierarchy and worldly wealth of the Catholic church of the time. Cathars believed that Earth was ruled by a malevolent God, and that Heaven was the world of the good God: this dualist concept of God was not unique to Catharism, but it was sufficient cause for the Catholic church of the time to brand Catharism as a heresy.



By the early 13th century, Catharism had taken such a strong hold in the Languedoc area, that in 1208 Pope Innocent III launched the notorious Albigensian Crusade - a crusade aimed not against the Infidels, but against the "heretical" Cathars. For twenty years, crusaders, led by the Barons of France sacked and pillaged the area, massacring Cathars or converting them by force to Catholicism. In the early 1220s, the Cathars' fortunes revived, prompting a second wave of Crusading. Finally, most of the area was subjugated, but pockets of Cathar resistance held out for the next twenty-six years.



"Cathar country's" fortified hilltops, castles, villages and towns remain to this day as a stark reminder of the area's turbulent history. Many of the castles predate the period of the Cathar heresy, having been built in earlier centuries as defensive positions along the changing border area between Aragon and France. During the Albigensian crusade period, many castles and other fortified positions served as strongholds for beseiged Cathars, and many witnessed atrocious massacres.



In order to consolidate their power, the new French masters of Languedoc rebuilt and maintained the fortified cities and the great defensive castles of the area. They strengthened the defences of walled cities like Carcassonne and Narbonne, and renovated most of the imposing strongholds that they had captured, as at Quéribus, Peyrepertuis, or Puylaurent. They even built the massive fortified cathedral at Albi, as a high-powered statement of Catholic dominance - and fear of revolt - in the area.



In recent years,; and since the 1970s, the concept of "Oc" - and with it the memory of the Cathars - has staged a strong revival, even to the point that in 2016, the people in the new French region formed from the merging of the Languedoc and Midi-Pyrenees regions voted to revive the name "Occitanie" as the name of the new region.



Photos show a Chateau on a hill top near Narbonne, a view near Carcassonne, the large school building in Montlaur , various photos of Carcassonne and our last evening meal before flying home in 2011.



photo Basilica of Saints Nazarius

Photo of having a meal

---