2018-04-07 Northern Italy and Southern France Carcassonne to Montsegur

Previous Day :: Trek Overview :: Next Day

Northern Italy and Southern France Carcassonne to Montsegur

Northern Italy and Southern France by Hymer Motorhome

Peyriac-de-Mer to Carcassonne

We wake late, about 8.00am, but take advantage of the showers and hot running water. Everything here is fine but just a bit well used and, instead of opening all the shower and toilet blocks, they only have one open. Mr C. goes for a shower and there is a long queue just for the toilet! Keep in mind that this is the higher-priced campsite, not the cheaper aire de camping cars.

Again we service Hymer before we leave and head south on the D119 in search of the Medieval Cités along the way route to the Pyrenees. We stop at Lidl in Carcassonne before we leave and get milk (UHT) and some more meat for stir fry and fruit.

The land here gives way to agriculture (peas, broad beans, beetroot, onions and canola) and we leave the grapes and vineyards behind. We stop for lunch at Fanjeaux, the first of our Medieval Cités, with narrow winding streets up to the old cathedral. It is still windy but the day is sunny and warm. We have lunch and then continue south on the D119 to Mirepoix and Montségur. We see Montségur rise up in the foothills of the Pyrenees, a fortress built in the thirteenth century to protect the Cathars from the Holy Roman Empire.

We park at the bottom of the hill and climb the steep mountain side (elevation of 170m). The day is mild and sunny and the view forward over snow covered Pyrenees and back over green and verdant valleys, is magnificent, well worth the climb. There is a ticket office part-way up where you pay €4.10 each to continue the ascent. The path is uneven, rocky and poorly maintained, towards the top it is difficult to climb.

Montségur is steeped in history and Gill feels the presence of it all around . Even as she approaches the bottom of the rocky peak, she knows the people here suffered a great deal and feels their ghosts in this place. We pass a notice that tells us that after the crusading Knights had slaughtered 60,000 Cathars at Bezier, the remainder withdrew here to this stronghold. The Siege of Château de Montségur occurred here, at this very place in 1243 – 1244. The Cathars held Château de Montségur against the French royal forces for nine months, starting in May 1243.

After the castle surrendered, about 210 Cathars and unrepentants were burned in a bonfire on 16 March 1244, again on this very spot. It is their ghosts we feel now in this place. This must have been one of the first examples of ethnic cleansing. In 1209 Pope Innocent III (an ironic name for someone responsible for so much killing) began the Albigensian crusade (after the name of the mountains in this part of the Pyrenees… Albigensia). The local people of Albigensia, wanting to maintain their own Christian faith (Catharism), retreated to Château de Montségur and lived in the fortress under siege conditions for ten months.

From May 1243 to March the following year, they lived atop of this mountain, and through a very harsh winter. It is hard to imagine their suffering on this lovely warm spring day. Finally, the Knights broke through and took the Chateau. The notice also tells us that those who recanted their faith were allowed to walk away stripped of all their land and possessions, but 200 Cathars who would not recant their faith were burned at the stake under the orders of the inquisition. Their presence was still here today, marked by a stone Stele standing above the Field of the Burned (Prat dels Cremats) in this lonely spot, it could be felt as if they had never left. A sobering thought.

We return to the Hymer, the warm sun shining on the fortress and the mountains all around. We drive into the village and find a car park (at the end of the village) where camping is allowed. We park under the shadow of Montségur and walk to the Museum on the village. Although we only have 20 minutes, we are fascinated by the archaeological finds: two almost complete skeletons of a man and a woman found here in a shallow grave[1] as well as many small metals buttons, keys, buckles, cloak pins, items of jewellery as well as weapons such as arrow heads.

We walk back through the village and settle under the shadow of this magnificent fortress. What a day. Later Gill drifts off to sleep thinking of 200 Cathars burned to death because of their faith… what a waste of life.

[1] The finding of these two skeletons is the basis for and start of the novel, Labyrinth by Kate Moss (2006)