More Castles and Stuff

The weather here has been as weird as it is in Seattle, so I'm told--it's been gray and rainy with a lot of wind every day since Ben left on July 15th.  So today I decided to see if there might be some sunshine down by the Spanish border, and I took off late morning for Chateau Peyrepertuse, one of the Cathar castles on what used to be the border with the kingdom of Aragon.  It's pretty close to Perpignan (the last big town on the coast before the Spanish border), and right across the valley from Chateau Queribus, where the wind took Ben's glasses off his face.  It took 2 hours of intense driving on little windy country roads to get there, but it was indeed a crowning sight on the granite "massif" hillside.  (Le massif is what they call the granite foothills of the Pyrenees--they ARE rather dramatic, just rising 1500 feet straight out of the rolling hills and farmland.)  Peyrepertuse, as I mentioned, was one of the "five sons of Carcassonne", along with Castles Aguilar, Puilaurens, Queribus and Thermes.  It's very dramatically placed on top of the hillside, and from a distance you'd have to know that it's there in order to see it--it's masquerading as part of the granite hillside, so you don't see it unless you look closely. 

I also saw Chateau d'Arques, which is a lowland Castle on the way to Peyrepertuse; but it was raining so hard I didn't want to get drenched to walk across a field to the castle!  I did have lunch in the town of Arques (pronounced just like Noah's big boat), which was fun--a little funky cafe which filled up right after I showed up.  One of their proud displays on the wall was a framed front page from the local paper announcing the complete and unconditional surrender of Hitler's Army back in 1945!  The memory of that War is still with the country of France--since they were occupied by the Germans for 4 years, there's still a lot of feeling about it.

After seeing Peyrepertuse (and I only took ONE wrong turn!), I tried to see the Abbaye at Alet-les-Bains, but it's under renovation work, and so it's closed.  I did get a photo of the remains of the 9th century cathedral which they are restoring just now.

And I DID see sunshine, briefly, between Peyrepertuse and Rennes-les-Bains, so I accomplished my goal.