France Encore

Looking over old Carcassone town

On Saturday we woke to the sound of the town clock chiming the hour, roosters crowing and a tractor passing our campervan. Ahh France. It’s so lovely to be back!

We drove over the Spanish border the previous morning and started noticing the main roads thorough-faring through the quaint little towns and villages again, a bit more greenery and the diesel prices creeping up too.

The internet 'wall' we found
(near our camper spot!)

Our destination this time was Carcassonne, so we found a little village nearby where we could stay for the night. We were back to the French camping spots which almost always have a toilet, water, and this time internet as there was a library right next door. Yay! The toilet was one of those squatting ones which was the first time we’d only had that as an option, and a few of the girls refused to try it, much to their own discomfort!

It would have been easy to spend quite some time in that village exploring the narrow streets of old stone houses with colourful shutters and vines clambering over their walls. So beautiful! They even had their own castle and a dolmen up the road. I am certainly drawn to the small villages rather than the bigger towns, although of course the cities have their own appeal too. But it’s easy to be drawn to spend money wherever you turn – being pulled in by their advertising.

We drove to Carcassonne and had lunch by the river then made our way up into the old part of the city and onto the castle, which was originally a Cathar fortress. Carcassonne castle was a stronghold of the Cathars back in the 1200’s and was built with some innovative ideas for defense for its time. Sadly it was sieged despite this (by damming the river and cutting off their water supply) by the Catholics who found Catharism to be a major threat to their church which was in financial decline at the time. (Cathars belief system was similar to what protestant’s later believed, and brought the Catholic church upon many ideas such as wealthy clergy and equality of women. They were known as peace-loving, hardworking laborers – often weavers, and were vegetarians too, which we thought quite cool.

Carcassonne castle along with the yellow art (!) on the walls. (Apparently, it's for it's 20th century birthday)

The castle itself had been well preserved (although there were some bright yellow stripes stuck on to the outside of the towers for some artistic reason) and there were many sweet little shops inside the city’s walls and a bountiful supply of restaurants. There was a beautiful church that we went into where we were so lucky to hear an a Capella group of four men singing in Gregorian style. It was so very moving being able to sit there and listen to such exquisite and professional singing, in such an old building. The acoustics were incredible. We bought a cd from them, which we are very pleased about. Both Josh and I really enjoy a bit of Gregorian chanting.

Stained glass window in the church

Just outside the church we also came across the most amazing busker we have ever seen. He was doing something crazy with gravity – causing sticks, a glass ball, and a coin from his donations to float in the air! There were no magnetics or any tricks of the hand (as far as we could see of course!). They really were floating! He could also balance five glass balls on his head too. We were gob-smacked, as was everyone else!

We saw this great busker too on the bridge playing French music. Lovely!

That evening we drove further north to another small town – Sommeliers, where Josh and Esmae, going for a walk to explore while I was cooking, found a little crow on the road with an injured wing. They brought him home, named him Kramer (I think it was the puffed up, helmet type hair that crows have), and we bandaged up the wing and put him in a crate we had. We looked after him for a few days. He was eating and drinking well, but it gets too hot in the car during the day, so we decided this morning to take him to a vet. They were going to send him to a sanctuary for wild animals. It was so lovely for us all to have a little bird to look after for a few days – I think the girls will be really missing him – but I did breath a sigh of relief once he was gone. One less thing to worry about tumbling out when we go around a round about!

Kramer the crow. He was quite friendly and could hop about on our hands and arms.