Sunday, 22 February 2015

Carcassonne and onto the Haut Languedoc

Fri 20th

After a relaxed breakfast ( we are now very good at these) we wandered down to the  Citadel. This has 52 towers and 2 concentric walls totaling 3km in length. Impressive . It has been built up and modified since 1226 and is currently still being changed – a new tourist welcome centre is under construction. We walked around the maze of streets, along some of the ramparts and then along part of the outside down to the river. The sheer scale of the place is very obvious when you look up at it from below as it dominates the skyline above the new town.





amazing stained glass in church







After studying the map we decided to explore some of the wiggly roads and mountains of the Haut Languedoc. We drove up and over some very narrow roads to Lac du Lauzas where there was an aire on the side of what turned out to be a reservoir. We saw hardly any other cars which made the drive so much easier. The views were lovely over the windswept hills and valleys. There is a holiday village and a campsite but all were empty as was the reservoir – well half empty. We parked up and enjoyed a walk around the edge to a dried out harbour, I hope they refill it for the summer tourists.  We thought we were on our own until a French van pulled up at 5pm.


lunch stop with a view


Lac du Lauzas aire


tides out..........



2 comments:

  1. You're heading north rather quickly now, we finally escaped Pinar San Jose after a pleasant 5 weeks there! We are now in La Sierrecilla. Drove out on the first day and caught stage 3 of the Ruta del Sol, Flamingos and a shed load of wildlife, in a salt lake yesterday. Today were shopping!!!

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  2. Hey T. did you know one of Mum's framed paintings is of Carcassonne? I didn't until she mentioned you had been talking about it when you 'phoned her. I took a good look at the painting in her hallway, and sure enough, it looks just like the 3rd pic in your blog.

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