Castles of Carcassone, plus Nimes extra

While Sharon was in the UK for a family bereavement I went in search of some seriously medieval castles. Sharon flew out of Carcassone which is a great part of France for castle action as the area was formerly the border between France and Catalonia (or north western Spain as it's often called), a fact that is still seen in today's landscape by the way of bilingual road signs. Great also for Sharon too as I didn't need to drag her about the ruins, which needed plenty of imagination to understand what it was like before becoming ruins.

The border was contested by the Cathars (and others before them) in numerous wars from the 10th century onward and these castles were are built in various periods around 1100-1200s to protect it and the local citizens. A treaty was signed in the 1600s which moved the border further south to the Pyrenees. This made all these castles obsolete and hence pretty much all of them were abandoned and left as they were to this day. Great as many of the castles we've seen in the past have since been converted into palaces with all the trimmings... ho hum, give me a real castle any day ;)

A short drive from Carcassone was the castle of Lapradelle which we gimpsed on the mountain range the previous day. Great castle with fantastic saw tooth walls built 500m above the village of Puilaurens. Not so well known, but my favourite as it turned out in the end as it was the most authentic and also hardly a tourist about.

Precariously pearched on the 500m high ridge

Inner courtyard, complete with intact catacombs below!

Nice view too!

From there I went to some of the more well known castles in the direction of Perpignan, passing through plenty of famous Roussillon wine regions.

Maury vinyards at the foot of Cucugnan

Ominous aproach to the castle up the zigzagged pathway

View from the top across to Perpignan and the coast

Next up was the Cucugnan whose only entrance was on one side of a rocky outcrop 750m high, the other sides were sheer cliffs! Great views and a good tour about the castle gave a great impression of how it was in times of seige when they often had to hold off armies for months on end before help arrived. All the goodies there, places to pour boiling oil down, precisely angled slots for longbows and crossbows too, plus a really neat dungeon to top it all off. Amazingly it only took 20 people to defend the whole castle!

Across the valley from here was the castle of Peyrepertuse, actually more of a fortress than a castle per se and it sprawls along a ridge above the village.

Look closely and you may spot the citadel on the ridge above the town

Look closely and you may spot the citidel on the ridge

Looking back accross to Cucugnan castle in the distance

Huge ruins and took a few hours to ramble through them, by the end of this one I was definitly a bit castled out and the inner castle geek in me thoughly exhausted... well for now at least!

Ok just one more , spoted this en route... Aguilar castle

From here I went up to Nimes where Sharon was flying back the following day and went mountain biking around the Pont du Gard, nothing better than finishing this off with a swim beneath the Pont, my all time favorite roman site. A truly remarkable feat of engineering, several 100ft high aqueducts that supplied Nimes with fresh mountain water.

Great place for a swim

Truely amazing engineering and 2000 years old!

Managed to get lost on the way back to the campground (should only have been 2 kms away) after following one too many brilliant downhill tracks that I couldn't pass up, and subsequently had to walk back up after ending up in the wrong place. Them's the breaks but still made it back in time to visit Nimes amphitheater and pick up Sharon on time too.

Nimes amphitheater with hommage to the Toreros