Lovely Little Villages

Today, between writing Chapters 7 and 8, I needed to just get out of the house, so to speak,  So I asked Mrs. Woodman if there were anything to see within a short driving distance, and she suggested Lastours (Las Tors in Occitan).  There are 3 smallish castles up on the side of the mountain there, and one can make a short hike up to the castles themselves.  So I went.

First off, I was proud of myself that I made the correct choices through each of the round-abouts, which is how the major roads intersect both in cities and in the country.  One takes the road to Mazumet, near the train station, and then look for signs to Lastours.  So I found the way to Lastours, and found myself going through small village after village.  Lastours is north of Carcassonne, in the "Black Mountains" (which we in the Pacific NW would judge as hills), and as you wend your way north and up, you run into little village after little village.  Many of them date from the 12 and 1300s, and you can clearly see the textures of stone walls beneath plaster on the sides of many buildings.  Of course, flower boxes are everywhere and right now all the flowers are in bloom.  I passed one field which was just breathtaking--as far as the eye could see, red and orange poppies, interspersed with lavender--so stripes of red, orange and purple off into the distance.  Reminded me of the tulip fields of Skagit County in April, only we've had such wet Aprils the last few years that it's been no fun to see them.  Well, today I saw big-time color in the fields and I did not get rained upon!

The villages, for the most part, have red-tile roofs, and the color of the buildings is yellow.  So you see red, yellow, purple, pink, yellow, green and orange as you pass the little villages.  It's really a riot of color; and the jasmine and roses smell wonderful, too.  I did stop in the small village of Conques-sur-Orbieres to check out one winery (it was advertised from the main road) and bought a bottle of red wine for 2,50 euros, labelled "La Cite de Carcassonne".  We'll see how good it is--perhaps Ben and I will have to go back there to check out their wines, when he's here to visit (next month).  I haven't had a bad red wine yet, and I never pay more than about 4 euros for a bottle--I can see why the French can afford wine for dinner every night!  I think I prefer the countryside to the cities of France.  Fortunately, there's a lot of countryside.

Incidently, the folks who are here from England in the other apartment (downstairs from me) are here for two weeks, and they just went to Andorra--and they went on and on about how treacherous the driving is to get there.  So I'm not alone in thinking that Andorra, tucked way up into the Pyrenees, really prefers NOT to be visited--that is, you have to have a lot of guts or maybe be pretty stupid to drive those roads!  (They said the alcohol prices are great there--we never stopped to look--not that I drink whiskey, vodka or gin anyway).  I'm content with my memories of the mountains and the snowfields, and the mysteries of a tiny principality way up in the mountains.