48 floors

Just like the Harbourside residences in Sydney or Docklands tower 2 in Melbourne or the Leadenhall building (cheese grater) in London or Tokyu Kabukicho Tower in Tokyo or the Tour Bioclimatique in Paris or the Conde Nest Building in New York. So quite tall buildings, all with 48ish floors of stairs. 

I only bring this up because my activity thingy on my phone registered 48 as the number of floors we climbed last week when we climbed up to Montsegur in the Pyrenees. Or to be more precise, drove to the village of Monsegur and then climbed from there up to the Chateau Montsegur to visit what remains of the stronghold where the Cathars withstood a long siege by the French crusaders. This from the site above: "In 1243, at the head of an army of 10,000 men, Hugues des Arcis, seneschal of the King of France in Carcassonne, and Pierre Amiel, Bishop of Narbonne, laid siege to the fortress. This siege lasted approximately 11 months, until its tragic end: the besieged surrendered on March 16, 1244, and more than 230 Cathars, unwilling to renounce their faith, were burned at the stake."

A tragic end to people just trying the honour their beliefs and not causing harm to others. Oh that we learned from this history and apply it to today's conflicts. It seems not, on all fronts. 

The village of Montsegur is up in the hills, up narrow roads with hairpin bends. Quite challenging for a first time out driving in a while. We don't have a car here so our lovely builder Andrea loaned us one of hers for the next few weeks. I have a few adventures planned. The weather here has cooled dramatically with rain and cloudy days and the tourist season is in it's fringe phase. That means it's much quieter here with more older tourists and some of the restaurants closing for the season. It doesn't mean the end of things to do or festivals. Like the wine festival we enjoyed last weekend. The one with the best music and dancing out in the fresh air in Place Carnot. While 'tasting' wine - by the glass and bottle. It was a slow wander home.

At the end of this month we're attending a concert, classical by candlelight, in a local church and then we're off on the train to Lyon to see LP in concert. But I digress.

Montsegur and that climb. Unlike those buildings above the climb was not up inside stairs but up a path wandered forever by the folks living and under siege up in the amazing stone fortress. At the bottom of the path is the place where the Cathar's walked to their death. More than 230 of them. Some recanted and lived. All lost their fortress home. I'm a big reader and am rereading the Kate Mosse series set in the area. Appropriate to have reached the end of Labyrinth in the days before we visited where the ending was set. It was the motivation to start our exploration of the Cathar history here at the hardest place to reach. 

The path up is not for the faint hearted starting with a stepped path and quickly turning into a rocky scramble with very slippery feet polished rocks to negotiate. Walking in the steps of history, visiting the remains of the fortress and the outstanding views made it all worthwhile. And best of all we had the place to ourselves so we could sit on the stone wall and reflect on the history; what it might have been like to live there; what it might have been like to both withstand the siege and perpetrate it. What the people must have been experiencing in this bloodiest time of religious  persecution. 

The walk down was even trickier, negotiating slippery stones, big steps and unforgiving drops to the valley. I'm not the mountain goat I used to be lol. Advice we should have taken, drive up the the start of the walk rather than parking and walking up from the village. The beer and panini's provided by the village café were very welcomed when we finally made it back. The drive home was uneventful and the evening very quiet as we recovered. As Jules commented, 'nothing a glass of red can't fix' as I fell asleep on the couch. 

The view to the top from start of the climb

The view of the village and valley from about half way up

The view up the steep rocky steps

Inside the walls

The view out the side where the crusaders breeched the walls 

So high up - looking across to the Mediterranean

Coming down, not for the fainthearted

Accordions

So I mentioned a young man on the church steps with an accordion and it got me thinking about a book I read when traveling around Türkiye in 2004. Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx. I'm not sure where I got it from, possibly stole it from Di as we were staying there. It captured my imagination as some books do, reading it between belly bug trips to the loo in a small hotel in Fethiye in the south. Since then accordions have held a fascination for me. 

Fast forward to last Sunday and the neighbourhood Vide-grenier or market selling all sorts of stuff. Stuff from people's garages, their wardrobes, their kitchen cupboards; stuff they've made or just want to get rid of. Wonderful things like an old fashioned ships compass, old box coffee grinders, art works and books. And two accordions! Imagine my delight. I was on the lookout for a gramophone to replace the one I'd misplaced in a move some time but an accordion beat that. I stopped, Jules managed a small conversation and we got a price. Cheaper than I expected but large to carry. Off we went to have lunch at our favourite castle café. And no, I didn't shut up about the accordions. I googled their brands from the photo I'd taken and hemmed and hawed for a bit, making a deal with myself that if they were still there I'd buy them. 

The very large one was still there and the man reduced the price to exactly the cash we had and off we went. Me with a big grin and Jules struggling with the large, unlatched case. We had lots of conversations along the way about what was in the large case, and lots of laughs and possibly ridicule when they found out what it was. Got to love our neighbours. I gave it a bit of a clean and had a play outside on the street. It worked, I don't know how to play so we got some interesting looks. Two young American girls stopped for a chat and admired the accordion. I did wonder about where it had come from and if it was haunted like the ones in Annie's book. So far so good. 

It's not yet on display because pretty much everything is covered in dust sheets because exposing stone walls and getting the kitchen relined and plastered makes plenty of dust. My plan is to look at restoring it, probably with help from the experts, and learning to play. Both winter jobs I suspect. Winter is coming after the hottest of summers, relentless sunny days above 35C days, so this cooler autumn weather is lovely. Still sunny and very pleasant. 

The market was huge covering the local carpark and right up both sides of the street

Lots of lovely stuff on this table, very tempting

Lots of junky stuff too, although I manage to get an old book of local watercolours

And here they are....

.....and there I am lol

The bells

I don't need a clock here. I have the bells, the very best alarm clock as I lay there and count them. The best thing is they don't  just chime once, they have a pause after the first time then go again just in case you miscounted. Apparently you're not late if you arrive on the second bells. That suits me. The bells belong to the Saint Gimer church, the new one. There's an amazing older version just down the road, 11th century. Saint Gimer is still a very active church with Sunday services where the bells go wild so no Sunday sleep ins, and there have been quite a few funerals lately. One I noticed had a young man standing on the steps with a very old piano accordion waiting for his relative to come out. One Jules thought yes, the church is open and met the coffin on it's way out. An embarrassing moment he has enough French to bow politely from. The bells are turned off at night thankfully.

We meet interesting people on our wanders, like the couple from the north of England I offered to take a photo of outside the church. We were carrying some bits to Andrea's van after a big day's work and were in our painting and stripping layers of paint off the stairway clothes. 'Do you live here?' she asked, probably on account of our clothing. Seems she's watched every A Place in the Sun and chateau renovation programme and was busting to be invited to see ours. So a guided tour was taken and she had some advice about the bathroom, as everyone does. Keep the basin and the tiles, the horrible peach basin ah nope. The tiles, yeah I was with her until quite recently but they both have to go so we can have a walk in shower and make better use of the space. A job for phase two. He loved the third floor  study and it's view of la Cite, my favourite spot too. 

We had a wine and a chat and it turns our our guest had been a forensic mortician for 30 plus years. We had quite a conversation about her work. Jules and her traded macabre tales from his time in the police. We often chat to people we find on our wanders and have made some good friends already, like Guy du Toit who is an amazing wood turner and artist has lived in New Zealand. And the couple we're meeting for lunch today Tania and John. Tania is an Aussie from Brisbane and John and Jules know each other from their work in Kosovo. A small world where they identified each other at a soiree we attended with Andrea.

Andrea drove us out to Rachel's soiree. Rachel has been here for ages and lives in the most beautiful village. She's a fix it up person, a tax and immigration consultant and author of my go to book Escape the Crazy or everything you need to know about emigrating to France. A must read and follow to get things done here, and I now have a signed copy. Bonus. Rachel is going to help us with the claiming insurance on the roof. Best done with the help of a fluent French speaker who knows the bureaucracy well. We're still waiting on permissions. Thankfully the roof held in the big storm we had recently with a bit of water on the tarpaulins and a few holes in the spouting from the huge hailstones. It was an enormous storm with one village and surrounds close by being hit by a tornado. Devastating and terrifying to watch. 

We've made great progress the past few weeks with level 2 completed. Getting the toilet ready to paint and painting it was fun. Me perched up on a ladder wedged between the side walls precariously stretching to paint around the newly restored beams and the high ceiling. I'm getting quite good at painting and not making a mess and I love the satisfaction of the job done. We had a morning of cleaning yesterday clearing the wood and plaster dust from almost everywhere it is and cleaning the floor tiles. A big job, one we'll need to do again as we progress but it's clean for now. The kitchen is started with the utility room/butlers pantry relined on two walls and almost ready to plaster the others. Dan the tiler will come and tile that area then we'll move the giant fridge into its final spot and begin on the other part. The part with the proper kitchen going in. So exciting to be this far. The kitchen is chosen, the Smeg oven bought and the big decisions made. 

I'm really enjoying living here. There's so much to do, like enjoying the music and activities of the Feria de Carcassonne. Four days of partying to the best music, like the Gypsy Kings and Gold. Dancing was done, as was enjoying the 10 euro litres of wine, yes litres served in plastic jugs with plastic cups. We may have had several too many and wobbly walks home a couple of the nights! We enjoyed our first dinner party at our place with Andrea and Gerry and Julie, lovely folks with so much in common, then onto the festival. A very entertaining and social evening. The best part, the whole festival was free so attended by local folks we had fun engaging with. Saturday and Sunday were more sedate with daytime activities like the string orchestra and flamingo dancing children at Place Carnot. And the rugby All Blacks versus South Africa at the Celt. The very best letting our hair down weekend, filling the fun cup to overflowing. 

The barbacane coming down from la Cite and the side of St Gimer. 

The best guitarists Gypsy Kings

Level 2, done. 

Kitchen, progress

Renovating fun

I mentioned in the last post we're in the process of renovating. The second floor is almost done, just the last of the plastering and painting, and the living/dining room is liveable with three quarters of the sides and the flooring done. The beautiful travertine floor tiles, heading into the kitchen yet to be tiled. A job for when the kitchen is done. The Smeg stove is in the shop waiting to be picked up and the kitchen is chosen, just needs a trip to the nearest IKEA to finalise the order and get the extra bits a kitchen needs apart from cabinets. 

The kitchen here is really big with a utility room/butlers pantry out the back. It's just in a bit of a state at the moment and will get worse once it's gutted for tiling, finishing the electrics, lining the walls and ceiling to cover the bits kitchens need behind the scenes. Then it's the fourth wall of the living room tying up all the loose ends of both rooms. My latest labour of love is the stairwell to the second floor. It all started as a cleaning off left over remnants from the old wall paper and loose plaster. Now it's a restoring one of the walls back to stone, accidentally when I got carried away removing damaged plaster and saw the stones underneath. 

A few hours of dusty work has exposed an interesting wall with a patch of damp at the bottom meaning the wall needs to breathe. And that means I get the exposed stone wall I've been seeking. Bonus! There's also a window shape we can see in the courtyard and this has turned out to be a window in the stairwell, possibly blocked when the current stairs were built. It has a lovely wooden lintel and large stones either side so worth clearing for display. I'm not sure how it will all look once it's done but I'm excited about the possibilities, if not the dust and rubble that's part of the process. Plus I don't have to dig around  other places to do the same, like the upstairs study which was my first choice. 

The roof works needed to complete the third level are still in the permission stage, a trick for the unwary when buying in an historical area where change must fit into the optics of the place. All good, it will come and we'll have a new, old looking roof so we can begin the work up there. A master suite with bedroom, living space for my reading chair, a huge ensuite, built in wardrobe and study. And the best view from the windows over looking La Cite. 

Our new home has an interesting history. Jules did some research and found out it was farriers from the 1890s up until the1920s when it started to take it's current shape as a home. This was also an area of cloth production and dyeing way back, on the barbacane walls just outside the castle and near the river. I suspect our location means it was also once a place where weavers worked to make the famous cloth from this area. 

Today was a productive wander to the market. The stone fruit here is delicious and it must be coming towards the end of the season now so I'm stocking up for winter puddings. We always walk different ways home and today wandered along the other bank of the river and over Pont Neuf to home. It's not so hot today so a pleasant wander. 

It's been a lovely social week with Andrea working here and a trip with her to Caunes-Minervois for a soiree, an afternoon of socialising and meeting new folks. Tonight it's dinner out at Adelaide, one of our favourite castle restaurants. It still feels a bit like I'm on holiday, guess that's what retirement is. Bonus being in this loveliest of places. 

Looking across to Pont Vieux

La Cite from Pont Neuf

Work in progress

The unexpected window in the wall

It's been hot

And busy with our first visitors. Hosting Ryan, Jules' 16 year old son and his girlfriend for a few school holiday weeks. We've done a bit getting out and about when the teenagers finally made an appearance. One largely disinterested and not really open to lots of experiences. Never mind, this retired teacher put on her best bossiness and got her off her phone and things moving when I could. It never fails to amaze me how engrossed in their phones kids of this age are, not interested in what's going on around them more interested in what's happening elsewhere in internet land on those post and view video sites manipulated by the billionaire class (the names of whom I will not mention). 

There's so much to see and do around here, especially at this time of year with festivals, concerts and summer holiday activities. We got some good time out at the lake enjoying the cool water on a hot day and the bonus that the 2B bus heads out there several times a day. There's a couple of activity parks of the park, an inflatable park where kids can go crazy, the ropes course and all number of paddleboards and boats for hire. Definitely a place to spend more time at as we head to less scorching weather.

There have been a few fires in our vicinity although not as many as a bit north of here. There have been some very smoky, hazy days with the orange sun peeking through the murk. Watching the helicopters dipping their giant water bags into the river to fill was sobering, knowing the fire was close enough to have been worrying. Having grown up in a forest where there were frequent summer fires means I'm very respectful of the damage fires can do. Some folks didn't evacuate, some died because they didn't move fast enough. Standing on our house roof with wet sacks extinguishing the sparks as they landed is not the best of my childhood memories. That and the sound of the pump while the men battled the fire on the hill across the road. 

But I digress, it's hot here. Delightfully hot and sunny. One of my first purchases for the house was ceiling fans. Others wondered why, the electrician questioned the need but shrugged and fitted them anyway. Fans are essential to keep the house cool, coupled with making the most of the cooler morning through breezes and keeping the shutters on the sunny sides shut. We don't have curtains and I'm not in a hurry to get them. The shutters provide privacy and darkness too. The novelty of pushing open the shutters in the morning to let the sun stream through hasn't left me. It feels like I'm in a movie and I have to pinch myself some times. 

So much of our life here is like a dream, like being on a permanent holiday. Getting up when the sun peeks through the shutters; sourcing a baguette and croissants from the Tabac across the road with a cheery bonjour to our neighbours and Cyril the owner. He pretty well knows our order by now and asking for different things is a great way to practice our French. I suspect by now all our neighbours know who we are, especially that we're here permanently and renovating this lovely old lady we live in. 

We've started our wider exploring with a trip to Arles, a place with some lovely memories of previous visits. An interesting place with the Rhone running through; visible and restored Roman history; and typically French culture, cuisine and wine. Here's a selection of pics from my phone, the phone with a broken lens restricting what I can take. Note to self, bring the big camera next time. 

Les Alyscamps - The street of the dead

Crypt - Much cooler under the streets

Arles Arena - The pilgrims sign at the top of the tower stairs

From the tower across the arena and walls

Amazing blue of  the sky above the arena

Sunset on the Rhone

Change of scene

I've been plagued for years by sore tummys, the ones that keep you awake at night and mean an early wake up. Ones where restrictive diets help, no gluten or wheat or seeds or meat, but don't completely fix the issues. Moving to the UK made it worse, moving to France has more than made it better. I've noticed during my trips here buying then renovating the house that the sore tummys go away, even eating baguettes and croissants with loads of butter and confiture. I was hoping this would continue living here and a little over two weeks in it has. 

I've been having the best sleeps in the heat under the ceiling fan, no sore tummy to wake me or keep me awake. Pizza for dinner last night, beer and wine, and baguette for breakfast. No issues. I've lost a bit of weight too, fitting into my tight shorts comfortably. The only thing I'm doing differently is eating cleaner food, local food without the stuff mass produced food has in it. Bread that's not edible the next day, not that there's any left usually, fresh local fruit and vege from the markets - not perfect fruit, naturally ripened fruit that tastes like it was just picked, sun kissed. The fruit from my childhood. 

Fruit I come home and cook and freeze for winter breakfasts. The wine is also cleaner, from a local vineyard traditionally produced and bought in 10 litre boxes for under 30 euros a box. Our home is also quiet, thick stone walls and mostly double glazed, on a quiet street. A cool sanctuary in the heat. Best of all is the relaxed lifestyle. The greetings from the neighbours on the morning baguette run; the laughs with the folks at our local cafes and bars; the interesting places to explore and wander; the busses going to places we want to; and the helpful people we find when we need something. Like the giant fridge/freezer I managed to buy and get delivered with quite the language barrier and the Smeg stove we bought last visit to the same shop. Both on sale with the best discounts. 

So all in all, despite the ongoing issues with getting the roof replaced, the best change of scene. 

A PS for the last post

Well, the tour Jules was on was amazing. Such history here, much of which I've read about over the years being a huge fan of Kate Mosse's books set in the area and beyond. I've visited most places in the books too, watching them come to life. 

I digress. The reason I didn't go on the local tour is I'd hurt my back and walking was for any distance was a challenge. Later that day I had to go to Place Carnot to meet with Margo the Marmite provider so I didn't want to risk not being able to do that. And I'm so delighted I went to meet Margo, a six degrees of separation meeting where we talked of people and places we both knew well. I'd had my home fix with a lovely like minded, adventurous, creative kiwi woman of around my age. Or so I thought. 

Enter fix number 2. There's an Irish bar here, The Celt, and a hot day meant a cold beer and cider were required. Imagine our surprise when a table full of young folks Jules immediately picked as squaddies (soldiers) and I picked as local to Aotearoa. The barman who already knows our name, put on some New Zealand classics like Pokarekare Ana and Nga iwi e, and then we were all one whanau enjoying singing and getting to know each other. It seems soldiers from New Caledonia, Tahiti and surrounding islands come here quite often. Mostly French speaking of course but still knowing these classics. 

I had the best day and had a huge smile on my face as we wandered home for dinner. Such a gift.

He aha te mea nui o te ao

What is the most important thing in the world?

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

Māori Proverb