Two châteaux in one day

Was cold last night, down to 1 degree as expected. We are in the mountains after all. We were organised though, nice warm duvet and jammies back on. As we left our lovely Pyrenean gorge stopover, we saw masses of people parking up and ready to hike the mountains. Beautiful, sunny day for it.
Our first stop was at one of the many, many hundreds of chateaux in the region called Château de Puilaurens, remains of a medieval castle perched on a panoramic outcrop accessed by a steep footpath, their words. And it was striking indeed. The hike up wasn’t too bad at all, of course it’s subjective but a swift 15 minute walk took us to the ruins. Great views and a little history with our leaflet. We ambled about for a bit then motored on. Roads flattened out a bit as we came out of the Pyrenees though the towns all looked like ski resort towns. It must be a different scenery in the winter.
Our stopover was Carcassonne, a hilltop town famous for its medieval citadel. And another chateau. We parked up just outside of the town and walked in looking for some dinner. Most of the restaurants don’t open until at least 6pm so we hung about for a bit, found a Vietnamese cafe, ate some chow and decided to look for a rock pub as it’s Saturday night! We found an Irish bar which happened to be showing the rugby World Cup (England v Chile) so stayed to watch that. When it had finished we walked back via the castle and citadel which was gorgeous at sunset. It has been laid out so everyone has access to roam through with lots of shops/bars/restaurants. Really nice. Had a wander then walked back to the van for tea and ice cream. More planning for the next few days. Lots of heavy driving coming up.Baca selengkapnya