A Mystery and the Cathars

After a quiet night, if you ignore one of the town clocks which dinged quietly every hour, we woke to clear blue skies and sunshine. After breakfast we emptied and filled before hitting the road.

First stop today was La Curiosite, a mysterious road which has curious properties. We had a GPS location and noticed some direction signs as we approached. Unfortunately, the French in their wisdom had neglected to signpost the actual location! There was however a scrawled note on the road saying La Curiosite is not a rubbish bin which turned out to be the place we were looking for. To test out this phenomenon, we placed a tin of soup on the road and it appeared to roll uphill - very mysterious! We did check with a level and despite appearances, the road does slope slightly downhill. Having satisfied our curiosity, we continued onward to our next destination.

Minerve is a small Cathar village set high above a bend in the river. We parked in the parking lot, which is free this time of year and walked the short distance down into the village. This consists of a number of medieval houses completely surrounded by a perimeter wall which clings to the rocks high above the river. We wandered along the main street past the original Cathar tower and then down one or two a side streets. We came across  a tiny gate in the perimeter wall with a quirky bridge and staircase which descended to the river. Following the river we came to a cave - described as a natural bridge - which the river was flowing out. It appears that the river has created a shortcut through the rock instead of going the long way around a bend. We explored the rest of the very quiet village before returning to Kiki for lunch.

After lunch we headed into Lezignan-Corbieres stopping en-route to fill with fuel (the first time since we left home). We did our weekly shopping in Lidl before heading onward to Lagrasse which is our stopping place for this evening.

Lagrasse is another medieval town which is said to be one of France’s Plus Beau Villages. The Aire de Camping Car costs €8 for 24hrs which is the most we’ve paid so far. We spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering around the narrow, winding streets before returning to Kiki to spend a little time sitting out in the sunshine making the most of the free town WiFi. As the sun went down we had supper and settled in for the evening.