Darren left first thing this morning to go to a conference in America, and now we are only seven.
It was cold and raining this morning so we decided to drive up into the mountains (Montagne Noire) to explore more Cathar country. In the beautiful village of Saissac was a gorgeous old ruined castle and medieval village. Our first point of call was a restaurant that had a panoramic view overlooking the gully and mountainside including the beautiful old castle. (See the view from our restaurant – it was still cloudy and wet at this stage which made the view all the more atmospheric).
We then proceeded to have one of the best lunches I have ever enjoyed! First course – bread and several type of pates and local terrines, second course – foi gras on soft gingerbread with fig jam, third course – scallop mornay on the shell with small local freshwater lobsters. At this stage I really thought I couldn’t eat any more, but then the fourth course arrived – confit of duck with green beans. By this stage we were groaning – but then we were served reverse bomb Alaska (Praline and nuts on the outside of an ice cream ball with meringue in the middle). By this stage we were truly stuffed and received the bill that was quite a bit higher than we had expected (huge mark up on the wine and coffee). The meal finished with the owner of the restaurant driving me to the neatest ATM, flying through the tiny streets in his little car smoking a cigarette, wearing no seat belt talking to me nonstop in French!
We rolled out of the restaurant and down the hill to explore the castle. A very interesting history accompanies this castle – it is a small castle, but well designed and perched on the edge of a very steep cliff. In the early 1200s, Simon de Montford and his troops spend 10 years trying to break into this castle in their crusade against the Cathars. In the end the noble man who owned this castle and was sympathetic to the Cathars, handed himself over to Catholic troops and the residents of the castle were allowed to leave and resettle to establish the village). My French is still completely terrible, but pictures within the tourist site seemed to suggest that residents of the castle were made to leave in the nude (I may have misinterpreted that although I am not sure what else the picture would have been conveying!).
The castle was a beautiful ruin which we were allowed to roam through and explore freely. It was an Enid Blyton moment where we could walk through the rubble, peer into old dungeons and position ourselves behind archers’ slits and imagine ourselves firing at Crusaders below.
