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Limoux France, 12 – 28 April 2012
“We have four grandparents.” said Atticus, “what
if we had six Grandparents, or even eight!”. His second set of
grandparents, Herb and Mary Auerbach, had just arrived from a visit to
Lisbon to spend the rest of the week with us in Limoux. Everyone was
benefitting from the visit; the grandparents were enjoying spending time
with their grandchildren, the parents, Erica and Andrew, had extra help
amusing their children, and Atticus and Roman always had someone to read
stories to them, play football soccer, go for walks and generally pay
them all the attention they wanted. What could be better?
Erica had found a Pony Camp near Limoux and
signed up Atticus and Roman for two morning sessions. There was also an
Auberge Fermière on
the same property. Farmers in France have joined an organization
offering tourists the opportunity to stay at a working farm and enjoy
gourmet quality meals featuring produce grown on their property. We
reserved for lunch after Pony Camp the first day the boys attended.
We arrived at noon to hear all about the boys’
morning. They had groomed their ponies, had riding lessons in a ring,
and taken a short ride in the rest of the property. Their favourite
activity was a game where they had to dismount their pony when their
pony’s name was called and get up on another pony. After we were
introduced to the pony assigned to them that day, we all trooped into
the dining room to enjoy our multi course lunch. It was well cooked and
delicious.
On the way back to Limoux we stopped in Saint
Hilaire to visit the Abbey. The Abbey goes back to Roman times and
reached its height in the Middle Ages. More than a century before
Champagne was introduced in France, the Benedictine monks in the Abbey
made the first effervescent wine in the world, now known as Blanquette
de Limoux. It is even said that Champagne used the methods of the monks
to make their famous drink. We had been enjoying a glass of Blanquette
as a pre-dinner drink and as a dessert wine, and we were all interested
in its history. The abbey is no longer in operation as a monastery but
it has been restored and was open for visits by tourists. Besides
reading the history of Blanquette production, we visited the rooms
assigned to the Abbot, which were much more comfortable than the rooms
for the other monks. The Coats of Arms of each Abbot was painted on the
walls of the Abbot’s reception room. Ray was pleased to find that one
Abbot was a member of the Raymond family.
You cannot visit the Languedoc region of France
without visiting the ancient walled city of Carcassonne, first
established as a settlement by the Romans.
Kate Mosse’s 2006 novel, Labyrinth, renewed interest in the
violent history of the Cathars. Popular from the 11th to the 13th
century in Southern France, this breakaway Christian movement was
extinguished in the early decades of the thirteenth century, when the
Cathars were persecuted and massacred under the Inquisition. Completely
restored in the mid-19th C, it is now a UNESCO World Site.
Atticus and Roman looked forward to seeing a real
castle, just like their toy wooden version they liked to play with at
home. They had never imagined a castle as large as Carcassone. They
immediately ran up the stairs leading to the walls and took turns
playing the role of the King and his Guard, scurrying along the walls
and peaking around corners, looking for enemies to shoot. When we found
the gate leading inside they were amazed that there was a town inside
the walls, but they wanted to visit the castle.
That would have to wait until we located their
parents and Grandpa Herb and Grandma Mary. The others had driven to a
different parking lot entrance and it took quite a while to track them
down in the narrow streets, crowded with tourists. It was time for
lunch. We managed to find a pleasant restaurant with enough room inside
for the eight of us. We were sheltered from a sudden rain shower that
fortunately finished by the time we were ready to explore the castle.
There was a good film portraying the campaign against the Cathars,
ramparts to walk, and artifacts to see. Ray and I enjoyed our visit just
as much as we had on our previous trip to Limoux, more than ten years
ago. Roman came away with a new, wooden dagger to add to his castle
toys.
The Auerbachs and Erica and Andrew were scheduled
to fly back to Paris on Saturday. Ray and I left everyone packing up
while we went to meet with Chris Georgas. Ray and I had stayed in La
Monastère, more than
ten years ago to enjoy a week of bicycling around Limoux and visiting
the Cathar Castles. Chris is very popular with his tours, centered at La
Monastère, for small
groups of bicyclists, artists, walkers and even cooks. Chris has
renovated and now rents out three other houses to independent
travellers, one of which, Kiwi House, we were renting for the next week
with Atticus and Roman.
We returned to Les Laurier to find Erica and
Andrew gone. Erica had cut her thumb when one of the wine glasses she
was washing in the kitchen sink broke. They thought the cut was deep
enough to require stitches and couldn’t wait until they returned to
Paris. Andrew had driven Erica to the nearest hospital in Carcassonne,
30 km away. The plane was not scheduled to leave Toulouse until later in
the afternoon, so there was still time for us to help get everyone ready
to leave. Ray and I finished packing up our own and everyone else’s
suitcases and checked that we had left nothing behind. Andrew called and
said he was on his way back to retrieve his parents but they would have
to stop at the hospital on the way to Toulouse to pick up Erica. We
learned later that Erica had four stitches in her thumb but that there
was no damage to tendons or muscle tissue. She will be left only with a
scar as a reminder of our Limoux visit.
How did we spend the next week with our
grandsons? We kept them busy following suggested walks up the hills in
neighbouring villages, swimming in the local indoor pool, playing
football soccer in village parks and in the town plaza, just a block
from Kiwi House. The boys had fun on the walks picking spring flowers
for a bouquet, investigating ant holes and other insects, and when we
had reached the top of a hill, racing each other down to the bottom.
One walk, starting in the village of Gardie,
ended up being a little longer than we had planned. On cresting a hill,
I suggested we head for the village we could see in the distance at the
bottom of the hill instead of retracing our steps back to the car. The
village turned out not to be Gardie. We discovered we were in tiny
Villar St Anselme, another 3.2 km from Gardie; so much for my sense of
direction. Ray calls this “just discovering new territory”. He
volunteered to walk back uphill to get the car while the boys and I
amused ourselves in a small park surrounding the village church. It was
a nice day and the boys weren’t disturbed.
Rather than return to our house for sandwiches
after two of our walks, we took the boys to our favourite restaurant in
Limoux. Café de la
Gare was termed a working man’s restaurant and the best value in town
according to the list of recommended restaurants left by the owners of
Les Lauriers. We had eaten there the first Friday before the rest of the
family arrived and were impressed with our meal. We were quite late
arriving for lunch but that didn’t matter. Both our meals with the
children were excellent. The boys were especially impressed with the
dessert selections, including an tasty fresh strawberry pie. Atticus and
Roman happily accepted chocolate Easter eggs from our hostess as an
after lunch treat.
Our hostess, a middle-aged woman, couldn’t have
been friendlier. She must be part of the reason the same people eat
lunch there day after day. A well-dressed, very elderly couple were
obvious regulars. Special treatment for them included cutting meat that
arthritic old hands could no longer manage and helping the couple into
their car when they left each day.
A trip to the Dinosauria Museum in nearby
Esperaza sounded like a good place to visit with the boys. There have
been extensive digs in the vicinity, uncovering dinosaur bones from
millions of years ago. The museum has well displayed exhibits of fossils
found in the area as well as huge reconstructions of several dinosaurs.
When we bought our admission tickets, the attendant warned that the
children’s area, in a separate room, contained a dinosaur that might be
too scary for young children. Roman was a bit leery of facing this
potential scary beast, but Atticus wanted to give it a try. The exhibit
was on the exit route, so the boys settled in to watch dinosaur cartoons
about the life of the retiles in that era. Finally both boys could wait
no longer. They made their way to the exit and peaked around the corner.
A huge Tyrannosaurus Rex let out a roar and moved threateningly. That
was enough for Roman. He returned to the safer cartoons. Atticus gave it
another try and eventually enjoyed being scared enough to make repeat
forays past the mechanical beast. Roman left by the safer entrance door.
On a hilltop close to Esperaza, sits the tiny
walled village of Rennes-le-Château.
A controversy centered on the wealth of a 19th C village
priest, Bérenger Saunière has brought many tourists to the village.
Saunière spent great sums of money building a tower on the edge of
a cliff, dedicated to Mary Magdalene as well as refurbishing the local
church. Some people believed he must have found buried treasure but In
1910-1911 he was found guilty of selling masses for large sums of money
and was suspended from the priesthood. Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci
Code, renewed interest in the existence of hidden treasure and people
come every year to visit the pretty village and find out if the rumours
of treasure could be true. After lunch at a restaurant next to the
Dinosauria, we drove the switchbacks up to the village to have a look
ourselves. The boys weren’t overly impressed with the history or the
beautiful view, but they loved walking along a wall at the edge of the
cliff and following a trail circling the walls of the town.
One of the most interesting sights for us was inside the small
church. A threatening statue of a devil holds up the Holy Water
basin. Someone, still unknown, even stole the head of the devil and a
replacement had to be made.
Chateau
d’Arques sounded worth a visit, especially to see the reported dungeon,
just a short drive from Limoux. It turns out the Dungeon really means a
Keep, so we didn’t see any scary prison rooms. We did see a high, square
fortified tower with four turrets. It was built after Albigensian
Crusade of the 13th century on lands given to Pierre de Voisins, one of
Simon de Montfort’s lieutenants, who helped defeat the Cathars. I
hurried to keep up with the boys who raced up the circular stairs in one
of the corner towers, which Roman informed me were called “escalier
tournant”, a much more melodic name. We peaked out at each landing
window to wave to Ray, who was still exploring the walled grounds.
That was the end of our Cathar country
exploration. I am not sure how much the boys will remember of the
history, but we all had fun exploring the ruins and countryside.
Read
Castles in the Snow
Read about our return to Paris:
The Novelist, by Andrew Auerbach
Read
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