Saturday: Queribus Castle and the Aude Gorge

We had a lazy start, slept in, and hit the morning market for picnic lunch components. Then we saddled up and hit the road for Queribus, one of the Cathar Castles stretching along the old boundary between France and Aragon. Approaching the castle was impressive; from the town of Maury where we turned off of the highway, it sits up in the sky. After wandering through the narrow city streets, we followed the roundabout signs and were soon headed toward the town of Cucugnan. The road was two pretty good lanes as we started twisting up the mountain. Soon we turned off of the main road and climbed the narrow track to Queribus. The car did a good job, though the lack of guardrails continued to amaze Jennifer as we threaded the winding road.

From the valley floor, Queribus looks the a finger on the mountain. (I wish we’d take a good picture from the valley floor.) From the top of the track, where you park, it’s still impressive. And unsquishable, as Jennifer found out. We wandered from the small parking lot to the wooden buildings at the foot of the trail, where we bought tickets and an audioguide. (The castle docents and shop owners were from the village of Cucugnan.)

After we climbed just a few feet and passed the first bend, I took this picture. They were big fans of capitalizing on what nature provided: a lot of the bare stone is the mountain itself, often barely shaped.

At the first landing, where the stable used to be, we were confronted with a sturdy wall and daunting arrow and musket slits. From the landing where I was standing, it’s the last clear spot before climbing the narrow stairs. It’s also right at the end of a straight away, so you’re forced to slow here– right in the kill zone. You already have a good field of view downhill from here– you can easily see the winding track we drove up to reach mighty Queribus.

Once you climbed past this point and forced your way through the short door, you then have a nice stone stair to advance along. Not that they make it easy.

Eventually you make it past the outlook points (they had a map labeling all of the things you could see from there: you could easily see significant cities and towns on both sides of the border), and finally turn into the castle proper. The first room (where the picture was taken from) was a three story wood barracks (tied into the rock and stone walls)– now we can look straight from the bottom floor up at the keep looming over everything. When you take an immediate left on entering, you come into a common area with a huge lookout window overlooking the sheer southeastern face.

A few steps up the stairs and we got out on a half level– it turns out that the room we entered had originally been two stories (you could see the sockets for the wood beams), with a great column sprouting from the middle of the room. At the top of the column four arches sprang, a beautiful effect. (Practical too, reminded our audioguide: 4 arches are stronger than one, so this was a powerful way to span the large space.)

Then back to the stairwell, where we climbed toward the roof. Let’s just say that no one’s swinging an axe in this compressed space.

At the top we emerge into a modern tile walkway over the stones. You can see incredibly far in every direction.

On our way out, we took a photo up from the courtyard. The castle’s pretty imposing. Amazingly, this fortress was normally held by just 25 men. They certainly had a number of advantages in defense.

From here, we made our way back down to the car, grabbed our lunch fixings, and settled on a nearby bench where we had bread, fruit, and tasty cheeses. We were pretty wiped out after clambering around all those stairs and slopes, but wanted to check out Peyrepertuse, another Cathar castle visible from Queribus. We drove to the foot of the castle and looked up at the imposing sight.

We decided that too many castles in a day would be overkill, returned to the car, and drove down through an Aude gorge. It was impressive, cutting deep into the rock below among mountains, so you could look up and down both at once from the road threading its way along a path in the middle. The view was breathtaking.

As we wandered around the lookout spot on the south end of the gorge, the weather decided to stop threatening and start raining. We hopped in our little Ka and drove back, thankful that we hadn’t explored and gotten stuck on top of Peyrepertuse in the rain. The rain was heavy– fat drops that the windshield wipers struggled to clear.

We wandered back to the room and I tried my hand at cooking up Catalan sausage. It’s a tasty mild sausage that cooks up quite similarly to Keelbasa… and is good with potato too.