We woke to one of the most lavish breakfasts of our trip, with certainly the best croissants, at Maison Laurent. By 10 we were off and backtracking a bit, as we drove south toward the Pyrenees. We passed Chateau Cousstasa again (also the day before) and drove on to another Cathar Castle, Peyrepertuse. The books describe Peyrepertuse as "a ruined fortress high in the French Pyrenees, standing at 800m high. The name Peyrepertuse means Pierced Rock. The lower castle was built on a strategic location by the kings of Aragon in the 11th century and the higher castle by Louis IX later on. The two castles are linked by a staircase carved into rock. The castle lost importance as a strategic castle when the border between France and Spain was moved in 1659, causing the castle to be abandoned." Our opinion of Peyrepetuse after climbing and exploring for a couple of hours was "WOW!" It is amazing that people were building such tall structures with cut stones at such a high altitude in 1000!
From Peyrepertuse, the Cathar Castle of Queribus is visible. After spending so much time at Peyrepertuse, we only took photos of Queribus.
We passed another castle ruin in the village of Padern and then stopped in the village of Villerouge Termenes and walked around the Cathar Castle there, now owned and maintained by the village. It is different than most Cathar Castles as it is down low near a stream and in quite good shape.
The roads we were driving on were quite narrow and winding, so we made a decision to go to Lagrasse, because the road was good. Lagrasse is a pretty village on a river with a large ancient abbey still in use. We saw the monks inside going about their daily chores.
Back on our way, we got on a one lane paved path and didn't pass another vehicle for over 40 km. The drive was beautiful, with the leaves turning and we drove over hundreds of small stone bridges built over streams with miles of stone wall ruins throughout the countryside. The first village of any size we came to was St Hillaire with a beautiful ancient abbey.
We arrived back at Maison Laurent by 5:30 and relaxed a bit before having a wonderful dinner prepared by Anthony and Rachel, endive salad with apples, walnuts, and roquefort cheese, mushroom risotto, and apple tart with apple sorbet for dessert. We not only enjoyed dinner but our conversation with them, as well. Another wonderful day!
