Minervois

Today we had a trip around the Minervois area to check out some places that keep appearing on property searches. So to rule them out or include them in possible properties to buy we made a trip – first to the Pic Nore in the Montagne Noir range, just to the north east of Carcasonne.

We’ve been through places today that Peter Jackson hasn’t even dreamt of yet.... we half expected Frodo to jump out of the bushes at one point where it was very dark, gloomy and thick forest. We saw another leaping deer, which proves the eternal sign on the highways. Heather was in abundance, which brought back a lot of memories for Wouter. Nice to see that purple haze over the hills.

We were using a large scale map as well, so the signposts were often not helpful giving local villages and village dots instead of larger place names, so it was sometimes hard to figure out where we were. In any case, we thought we were probably well off the beaten track as we saw only 2 other cars in an hour, and that in the height of tourist season....

La Tourette Cabardes was very interesting with church built on a bedrock of slate.

The Pic Nore (1211m) is also the site of a satellite relay station, which is surrounded by a lot of high fencing, making it a very important place. Although there was no sign of life behind the wire, we guess they deal with things remotely. Some fantastic views from there across to the southern Pyrenees, but to the northwest it was cloudy and we were above the cloud base, which still made it interesting.

Then we wound our way back down a less goaty track to Caunes-Minervois, via Citou, which was a very interesting road. There were some spectacular rock formations (for those of you geologically-inclined). Mas Cabardes is an interesting town which uses a lot of slate, even for the sides of houses rather than just the roofs as in other areas. This brings back memories for me of the slates of Wales, although here it seems to be more colourful. The other thing we saw on our descent was a wall of rock showering water, so it had a lot of different mosses growing there – very pretty. I imagine in winter and spring it cascades rather than showers.

On to Olonzac (via the Canal du Midi a couple of times, near Homps) and then Minerve, which is just mind-blowing. The first thing you see is what looks like a snapshot out of the Flintstones – a deep gully/canyon, and then hundreds of cars parked at the top, above the river Cesse (dry in the dry season and running in the wet season, and sometimes running underground). The only thing missing was the drive-in and Brontosaurus ribs! We figured that the car owners were rock climbing or walking down in the canyon. Minerve itself seems to rise out of the earth and be welded to the rocks below. Quite amazing.

From Minerve back via Olonzac and on to Lezignan-Corbieres, and then a race home to try and avoid the peak traffic from Carcasonne – too late, missed a turn-off so had to double back and then find the correct turn-off to Limoux. When they do roadworks here, they just black out the names on the signboards so you can’t take that exit or turn-off, but it doesn’t help with finding your way as you have to get off the main road somewhere...

A long day, which started out at 20 degrees due to the cooler weather last night, but soon became 34 degrees during the afternoon (I love air con in the car!) Impressions of today – beautiful countryside to do a full day tour and gasp at the magnificent rock formations and stunning views all around.

Lastly, some more nature pics we've taken over the last couple of weeks - first some barley, then 'Bearclaw' (at least that is the translation from the Dutch name Berenclauw), then Cassy trying to get some cool air on our balcony in this heat we're having.

Flora et Fauna et Canal du Midi

We’ve been walking the local railway tracks – disused since around the 1970’s but made into public walking and cycling tracks. Some of them are very interesting and go behind farms with crops you can view at close quarters. The other good thing is that you can see a lot of wild nature as you walk past, seemingly unperturbed by humans.

The slugs I’ve already mentioned (see picture), other things we’ve discovered are some lovely flowers which I have no name for, so if anyone out there can help, please do – either Latin, English, Dutch or French name. Actually we found out it's called a Teasel (sp?) used for carding wool - picture under slug pic.

Due to some good detective work I’ve also found out what the seeds are in the poo we’ve been finding. They are a wild cherry – very small – and found all over the place. Something is eating the fruit, pooping out the seeds in large quantities, and the giant slugs seem to be attracted to this. We've been told that it could be foxes eating the cherries but anyone who might know do let us know.

So far we’ve seen 5 snakes – 2 dead, 2 crawling across the path/road, and one dangling from the talons of a hawk about 100 meters in the air. We’ve also seen a few deer around the edges of the forests. Other “wildlife” are the sheep that find their way out of paddocks and onto roads and cows which find their way to local roundabouts and kindly trim any grass or other delicacy growing there.

Some of the roundabouts are interesting – they try to put a theme (usually local) on them, which makes them very distinct. I doubt things like this would survive a weekend in NZ.

We made a trip to some small villages to the north of the Canal du Midi. The Canal looks like it can be a bit of a circus, but if you find a quieter spot, can be really interesting with the comings and goings of boats and barges going through locks – up to four at a time to get to the next level.

There are literally hundreds of hectares of sunflowers ready to bloom – a few are already flowering and are a spectacular sea of brilliant yellow in a green (trees) and brown (barley, wheat and bare land) landscape.

On our way to the Canal we found a poterie in the lower part of the Black Mountains, with hundreds of pieces of pottery of all kinds. We stopped briefly and got away with only a few small purchases – a vase, a casserole pot and two noodle/soup bowls.