Chateau Puivert

Before we left Montjardin we visited the Castle of Puivert, which is in the village of the same name. Due to having no internet for many days and our move and subsequent house hunting, I omitted a blog which really should be here.

So, here it is. Let’s start with some history and technical facts. Chateau Puivert is found on a rock at 600m altitude. The date it was built I haven’t found, but it’s medieval in character. All sources refer to a three-day siege in 1210 when the castle was taken over by lieutenant Simon de Montfort. There are six towers incorporated into the castle walls, and has a keep of 35 meters high.

A narrow slit to fire your arrow at approaching attackers:

Apparently the signal platform was set up to communicate with Montsegur, another of the Cathar castles which is very imposing and an interesting visit.

There are decorative sculptures in the Hall of the Musicians, which are quite amazing and prove the importance of music, poetry and entertainment of those ages. In this hall you will also find some replica instruments on display. One of the musician sculptures:

The castle has been used in numerous films for many scenes and the current owner lives in the castle and is trying to keep it up and make further restorations. Films include: The Ninth Door, Roman Polanski, Lady Godiva, Vicky Jewson, The Passion of Beatrice, Bertrand Tavernier.

Where the ladies would have sat while stitching their embroidery:

The chapel vaulting:

There is a legend of The White Lady of Puivert. It says that towards the end of the 13th century, a princess was the host of Jean de Bruyeres. The lady loved to walk beside the lake and sit where there was a rock in the shape of a chair. She asked the Lord to lower the level of the lake. But sadly the dikes gave way carrying the Lady (who it seems was never found again) and destroying the village and flooding nearby Mirepoix.
More pictures and information on this page (in French).

Le Grotte de Mas d'Azil

Today we decided to do some more spelunking type of activity and headed for the grotte de Mas D’Azil. The town of Mas d’Azil is not far from where we are staying, and there you will find the grotte, which is partly exposed to the public as the road passes through the tremendous cavern.


Their official website as below has more details:

www.sesta.fr/?site=GrotteDuMasDAzil

The main cavern is we estimated 150 meters across from where the road is through to the other side. It was carved out centuries ago because an inland sea found its way through a crack in the wall and gushed and dissolved the limestone leaving the tremendous cavern.


The tour takes place behind all this so you can’t see the displays until you have paid.

This is a reconstruction of early cave dwellers performing various tasks:

They are still discovering treasures in the caverns, but they found one human skull of a young girl with deer horn in her eye sockets, and a bear skull, as well as lots of human tools of stone, deer bone, and other animal bones and teeth, and wood.


Your ticket also covers entry to the museum which is a few minutes away, where they have the original skull on display as well as other items found in the cavern and caves. Some of them are so finely decorated (but I guess they had no TV and plenty of time once they’d fought off the bears!) Apparently the bears are special cave bears which were missing their pre-molars and were mainly vegetarian and weighed about 500-600kg. They are now extinct.



There was also some crude jewellery, which is actually quite attractive due to its simplicity and lack of over embellishment. Needles made from bone and with an eye for threading – guess they used sinews for cotton. And of course some replica drawings of wall paintings found in the caves. All very interesting and a must if you are interested in geology, prehistoric or early man, caves, fossils, etc.

By the way, the town of Mas d’Azil has some very interesting buildings – many colombage houses in reasonable condition but still looking quite original. The museum has a magnificent stairway (I jokingly asked Wouter if we would have one like this at our place....), the ceiling on the ground floor is decorated with old hessian between the beams and the walls are now filled with brick between the wooden posts instead of peat and straw, but you can still feel the original character of the place.

Riviere de Labouiche

Yesterday we visited the Riviere de Labouiche. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos, but there were pics on the brochure we picked up, which are intended for public distribution and on their website, which is also public. But just in case, I will cite the source to be professional and in case you want to read more (in French):

http://ariegeterrede.free.fr/grottes.htm

You go in a group of 10-16 people, in one boat under the ground with a “gondolier” guide. The first part is an explanation of how the grottos were formed hundreds of thousands of years ago, and how they were discovered, only recently in 1908 by Dr Dunac, as you slowly make your way along the first section of river.


The River itself is around 2km long and its source has not yet been located. It is officially the longest underground river in the world. Some information from the guide, who we can’t totally understand for a few reasons – he talks quickly, he looks away while talking, there is an echo in the caverns, he speaks in colloquial French. However we do pick up some basics when he is facing us and talking more slowly and from what we already read about the tour. Now and then the boat hits the side of the cavern walls, just to confirm the message that you have to keep your hands within the boat, and of course every once in a while you have to duck as you go through a narrow and low section.

Stage two finds us going further along the river with more intriguing formations of rock, caverns and some stalactites which hang from the ceiling and stalagmites which grow from the ground upwards (my old geography teacher would be proud as I really did remember these).

Some of the formations resemble animals, which is interesting for the imagination – elephant’s trunk, elephant’s rear end, fox head and so on. Some of the formations also need some imagination, so of course you get a plate of spaghetti, and maybe something that looks like giant octopus or squid, with their tentacles gracefully behind them almost touching as they propel themselves forward under the sea. They were also the right colour for this.

Up some steep steps and then arrive at another section of river where we glide through to the cascades, where the guide gently jokes to the children aboard – ok – up you go. Ha ha ha. On our return we find “JAWS” in the ceiling of a cavern above us, and then comes the music... Then we find a witch, a nativity scene, and many other resemblances to familiar objects. A really worthwhile trip and if you go/come to the Ariege, it would be my pick of things to do here.

Our New Home

After a few more weeks this will be our new home - outside view looking at south facing verandah, entrance, then back towards the gate entry - and of course we have to wait for the obligatory land searches and legalities to proceed, which makes it end of September or beginning October for occupancy:


The garage/workshop/print studio of 135 sq m, which runs on the western side of the house and there is space in between garage and house to make a nice seating area, driveway appears to be lightly sealed:



This is what you can see when you look out from the verandah, and is one of the small garden areas around the property - the stones behind the table are actually the top of the well, which we will need for watering our vegies:



The vegie garden which is bare at the moment, but we'll soon fix that once we're in:


Inside the kitchen taken from dining, which looks reasonable but all the appliances are now gone and we will redo this area.


Dining area with wood burning fire insert which has access onto the eastern verandah:


And again, dining looking out onto eastern verandah - the colours in this picture are better than the previous ones:


It's a Mediterranean style home made from stone (concrete) in the 60's with verandah to east and south, and garage to west, on 3,500 sq meters of land, which is in three titles (handy if we want to subdivide in future). Huge vegie garden, but we'll only need a fraction of this space. We'll grass the northern garden which was rotary hoed to make it easier to manage while the property was for sale. The garden behind the well contains shrubs and trees - we'll need to do quite a bit of tidying up and pruning and removing dead and old branches etc.

More details and photos of progress once it's officially ours and we move in and start our refreshements. Photos above from agents websites, and were taken about a year to 15 months ago.

Mountain Tour Ariege

As some of you know, we are currently house-sitting for friends near Rimont, which is west of Foix, in the Ariege. The break is extremely well timed for us, as we are tired from our house search, which is now over (as we have found a home – but more on that in another blog). The house is next to an Abbey, which we plan to explore later in the week.

Today the weather was supposed to be overcast and maybe a few showers, so Wouter didn’t think a car trip was worthwhile, but having convinced him that a short trip to scout around would be good, we set off at a leisurely pace.

At St Girons we were supposed to take a particular road, after having carefully planned our route to avoid going over old ground and do a relatively short circuit. However, the best laid plans.... we (that is, the driver) took the wrong road as I was not yet navigating. But, what a lovely mistake this turned out to be.

After going through some familiar looking scenery we discovered the mistake so had to take an alternate route via Croix, Vic D’Oust, Oust and Seix (no smart comments please). At Vic D’Oust we found the most delightful old Roman church and stunning turret where Rapunzel surely let down her hair.

The route took us along the Cap de Bouirex, and the Col de la Core – checked on the map to find the contour lines were very close together. Our height at the Col was 1395m, but we saw that the Cap actually goes up to @2500m. The clouds shrouded the tops of the surrounding mountain tops, but we did catch glimpses here and there of animals grazing further up – they looked so small in relation to the background, so we had to imagine that indeed, there was a lot more mountain hidden in the misty clouds.

Lots of people camping there in their motor homes, and lots of other people going on walks dekced out with their sticks, backpacks and hiking gear.

We started our descent and found a small village which we’d seen from higher up which appeared to be very sunny – Ayet. The roofs in the villages of this region all had slate in varying patterns, which once again reminded me of my homeland. Also, going down to lower altitudes, we saw paddocks which had been ‘fenced’ by rocks – by no means there to keep out deer, bears, pigs or other wild animals, but merely to show the boundary from each other’s neighbour.

Among the trees we found many beech, ash, birch, and vow to return in mid-autumn to check out the wonderful colours we know they will be.

Lower down we saw some sheer rocks dotted by half a dozen goats who seemed to prefer grazing on bare rock to the lush growth around them. They were semi camouflaged by the colour of the rocks, so perhaps that is why they like it (maybe someone who knows goats well can let us know).

After Portet d’Aspet the mountainous landscape behind us, the hills were once again apparent to show us the way home. All in all we had a great day and were pleased at the wrong turn made early in the day which showed us some little delights we would have otherwise missed.

Lunar Eclipse

Tonight Wouter took Cassy for his evening walk, and called me to look out of the window. There was a partial lunar eclipse going on – much to our surprise as we’ve heard no mention of it on any news broadcasts or in online papers.

I checked out the NASA site and they confirm, indeed, that there is a partial eclipse today:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2008.html

One photo is not great because it was dark and the light of the moon comes out as over exposed. However, you get the general idea. The other picture is taken from our street and Wouter was hoping the street lights would allow a better photo.

Meanwhile in the square (Place de la Republique) there were some performers entertaining a small crowd with some light country and rock and roll music, and some brave dancers doing waltzes, line dancing and generally having a good time:

Festival

Over this last weekend there was a festival in Limoux. It’s that time of the year when most places have a festival (August), while there are lots of people to attend and lots of people visiting on their holidays.

There were lots of stalls selling regional produce, including wines (and the famous Blanquette which is apparently just as good as champagne, from which our street takes its name), honey, honey cake complete with lots of bees who found it irresistible, roasted nuts, nougat, and other produce. They also had someone making paper products out of ropey paper – things like witches hats, skirts and so on. There were clowns for the children, face painting - and for pregnant mothers, stomach and body painting - wooden toy exhibition, some antique cars and motorbikes, and all the spare parts one might need in a sort of vide greniers for the garage enthusiast! I liked one of the old Citroens and an old Simka.

In the evenings they had a meal of local produce (you buy what you want and the accompanying wines) and then after that against the backdrop of Saint Peters church, which was quite spectacular. Saturday night was a Spanish group, very nice indeed, and Sunday night was a jazz group. The Spanish group inspired quite a few people to take to the floor around their table and do some latin dancing. One older woman was really into it, especially when the flamenco music started. Music pics:

On Saturday we visited the local Musée Petiet, from Mme Petiet who was a local artist. Some nice pictures and the other thing which was lovely were the paintings from local school children who had visited the museum and copied a scene, had it framed, and are now on display.

When buying our ticket, the girl asked if we’d like to include the Musée Piano – you get the 2 at a reduced rate. We said yes, so today we did the Piano museum. It was in the church of St Jaques, which has a very long history from 1325 or so but has been rebuilt many times because of many different disasters, attacks etc. It was a lovely setting for the exhibition with some wonderful pieces. Some pictures below - overview, piano maker's tools, roll for pianola:

The temperature is creeping up again as today we had a thunder storm so it’s been very humid (reminds me of Auckland). The rest of the week we are supposed to get rain, but I’m not worried as it will cool things down again, give the plants some much needed water and freshen things up again. Also, we’re looking at properties big time now, so spending time in the car when it’s hot is not much fun.

At the moment screening on French tv is a programme called ‘Interville’ – just like “top Town” for those of you who were around in the early 80’s. One of the ‘games’ is where the group members stand on a foam step, dressed in a rubbery costume, and then they let a live bull in the ring. There is a timer going and the people have to stand still until the bull has a go at them, then they can run out of the ring – hopefully the bull does not chase them. The bull’s horns seem to have been made less sharp by the addition of some plastic stubs over, I guess like a cue tip. Still, they show close-ups of the faces of the participants and they don’t look too happy!

And to finish off this post, a picture of man and dog finally coordinated in ball throwing and retrieving. We call this place the poo paddock because of what Cassy found here and picked up in his mouth a few weeks ago....

Trois Mariages et un Serpent

The last 3 weekends in Limoux we’ve experienced some things we don’t normally see in NZ. For example, the first Saturday in our flat, we heard several vehicles passing – like rush hour traffic – all sounding their horns. We couldn’t figure out what was going on and thought it must be some sort of protest or strike.

I decided to check it out from our balcony as it kept going for ages, then I saw the cars – all decorated with bits of fluffy netting (you know the sort of thing you can use in the shower with gel as a scrubbing aid) which were tied on to the aerial and the wing mirrors, and in some cases the windscreen wipers.

It was a wedding. Of course – we’re not sure at what stage they were, but I guess they were off to the reception. Apparently there are 3 stages of marriage (and, in France there are 6 different types of marriage, we found out recently!) – first a visit to the notary to establish division of property (in case you divorce etc), the second is to the local Maire to provide official representation of the state over the marriage, the third to the church or other venue.

In a seemingly unrelated story, we found a prospective home a couple of weeks ago – an abandoned house we thought, complete with a couple of beehives. I joked with Wouter as I suggested we could call it “the Beehive” (this is a joke for kiwis) – I won’t repeat his answer as I could get expelled from the blog site.

So we decided to be brave and email the Maire of this village, as we couldn’t think of another way to find out if the house was for sale or not. I’ve mentioned before that it can be hard to tell if a place is for sale as they don’t always use signs. In our hopefully polite French we asked what we thought were the right questions. No reply. After almost a week and its status has changed from prospective to ‘dream home’. What to do next. It’s August, everyone is on holiday, also the Maire, we imagine.

Decide to take a trip to the village, walk around and then approach the office to see when Mr Le Maire might be available. We see the door open even though the notice tells us he is away until 20^th August, and hesitate slightly, then encourage each other to go up the steps to the office. Mr Le Maire is in, complete with sash of the republic. Impressive, smart and friendly. Suddenly we are overwhelmed by a large group of people from the village who are attending a wedding (ahh! The sash now makes sense). So after saying 'Bonjour' to 50 people, and they are all safely huddled in the chamber, we retreat downstairs to wait (at the invitation of Mr Le Maire) until the service is over to return to discuss our business.

Lots of cheering and a few minutes later, the party descends and heads to the waiting vicar at the local church.

We go up again to the chamber and explain in our politest way and best French (somehow we managed to rehearse a couple of phrases on the waiting steps). Mr Le Maire tells us, yes, the house was for sale, BUT it has been sold – elle est vendue! There was a dispute, but indeed, now sold. Bubble pops, back to the drawing board and a feeling that we lost something which could have been our dream.

Today, another wedding party passed through the street complete with sounding horns and fluffy netting and lots of cheering, while we were searching galore on the net to try and find a replacement dream home, when came a knock on our door from our neighbour, Irene. She had a snake in her house and she absolutely does not like snakes.

Wouter and me to the rescue. With the aid of a large cardboard box, Wouter shuffled the small box (which Irene had put over the snake) into the larger one, without lifting it off the ground. Then we took a walk to the far end of the river where there is a bit of scrub and released it – it was an adder, about 45cm (1½ feet), was quite a small one and very thin. Wouter put it safely out of the way under some scrubby leaves. Hopefully Irene’s cats don’t bring in another one to play with!

The last couple of days we have walked almost every street in Limoux - one below - (at least, we think so, but we keep finding more and more streets we have not yet walked!) to try and find a property which is advertised which caught our fancy.

Tonight we finally found it (below) but may rethink if we still fancy it after seeing it and checking out the site on Google Earth. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but there’s no chance of a garden or pool and it looks out directly onto another building, so no view either. Luckily I’m married to a shoe repairer who can replace my worn out soles....

Place de la Republique at night:

Pradès

Today we decided to make a trip down to Pradès, which is south west of Perpignan and south of Limoux, almost at the border of Spain, Andorra and France. The weather was supposed to start out cloudy and then be sunny and reach around 36 degrees. We figured if we left early enough we would do most of our travelling while it was still fairly cool.

So we left Limoux, via Quillan, Axat and then on through the Gorges of St George – what magnificent rocks all around – a little track of a road through such a deep gulley, and with such high ‘walls’. Absolutely stunning. Note the overhang of the rocks across the road - these are high enough to allow buses to pass, so that gives some idea of scale.

Wouter had trouble with the picture below due to the high light contrast. It is quite dark below in the valley, in fact so dark that the automatic lights came on in the car, while up above the light was brilliant. Hence the photoshop adjustment to show the high walls of rock.


At Ussen we took a right turn via Le Pla, which was apparently the scenic route. We climbed up pretty high and then hit a plateau, which was stunning to say the least. It was a sort of continuation of the Plateau de Sault, but with slightly different vegetation – you could say a little more Mediterranean at a high level, but still alpine.

At Formiguères you can see Pic de Pam (yes, it’s true, they have a mountain named after me!) Opposite Pic de Pam (2411m) is a mountain called Pic du Bastard – you may draw your own conclusions on that one. Pic de Pam is the mountain on the right, just above the pier in the picture.

We then drove further to Lac de Matemale, and stopped for a bite of lunch on the side of the lake opposite Les Angles. This town is amazing – it’s a total winter chalet for skiers anonymous. There are literally hundreds of chalets dotted all over the countryside and I guess they are all full over the winter as people make their way down for a spot of skiing on the nearest piste. Of course, the day would not be complete for Cassy without a dip in the Lake, which was pretty deep, cool, and worth every ball thrown to retrieve.

Les Angles:

After lunch we continued on to Mont Louis with its star shaped fortified walls. The next bigger town was Villefranche de Conflent, which we plan to revisit after the mad tourist season. It was absolutely amazing – a completely fortified town with all walls still intact and there was some sort of market going on so we couldn’t find a parking space until well out of the town area. There was also an abbey up the hill behind the town which looked interesting. This will be a day trip in the early autumn. Pic Carlit (with still a few patches of snow):


The long and winding road:


After this point, we travelled a little faster when the road straightened out and to the south you could still see some pretty high mountains – Pic de Canigou (below) is one of the highest in the area and I must say is very impressive indeed. There were lots of villages, some hilltop, others half way up the hills, but all huddled together for protection against the elements and historical intruders. Wouter plans to make a woodcut of the village of Eus (below Canigou pic) at some stage.


After Millas, we headed north again to join the main road from Perpignan to Quillan. A fast trip home again with only a quick stop to drink some nice cold water from the chilly bin (ahhh, lovely!) and then close all doors and windows and enjoy the air con out of the heat of +36 degrees... Envying the canoeists and water rafters going down the Aude some kilometres and getting splashed with cold water.

The grapes and olives growing in the area look pretty hard done by due to the lack of rain, and it looks like they are not watered regularly. The earth looks parched beyond anything I’ve seen in NZ. Wouter said the olives looked like they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth – I wondered who has ever counted the teeth of an olive?

All in all an absolutely mind-blowing day – I just can’t tell you how stunning the views were and I doubt our pictures do justice to the real thing, but hope they give you a bit of an idea. We plan to revisit during autumn and winter to see how it all looks then.