Long days and medieval knights

Well fortified ... (from top) Carcassonne’s Cite's cobbled streets; a mural at Notre Dame de l’Abbaye; jousting reenactment. Photo: Lonely Planet, In a land of castles and cassoulet, Susan Johnson slows to the seasonal rhythm of life. Lost in Carcassonne, not entirely certain whether I'm heading in the direction of the medieval walled Cite for which it is famous, I use my schoolgirl French to ask a passing stranger for directions. "Mais oui," replies the handsome, welldressed young man of perhaps 20 or 25, holding hands with his plump, pretty girlfriend. Advertisement: Story continues below He confirms that I am indeed taking the best and shortest route possible, before giving me his broadest smile, revealing a mouthful of blackened, medieval teeth. Those rotten teeth sum up for me the experience of being in the Languedoc region of southwest France, an area with only the thinnest of tourist veneers covering its gnarled and ancient heart. Carcassonne's medieval Cite may be a Unesco World Heritagelisted site and the second most visited tourist site in France after Paris (the French love it) but in truth the city and its regions are more la France profonde than bon chic, bon genre. This is the supposed birthplace of that quintessential French peasant feast, cassoulet, the rich, heavy dish made from pork sausage and goose and duck and sometimes more pork, mixed with white haricot beans. Nearby Toulouse claims to have invented it, too, and so does the town of Castelnaudary, 30 kilometres from Carcassonne, but whoever dreamt up the dish was most certainly a Languedoc native, steeped in the language and traditions and seasons of this most southern of French landscapes. Still deeply agricultural and tied to the rhythms of the farming seasons, Carcassonne is surrounded by vineyards and farmland. Its calendar is marked, Rosetta Stone Arabic year in and year out, with local fetes celebrating cassoulet or chestnuts, onions or farm labourers and most especially foie gras, a speciality of the region. Carcassonne and its environs are also home to the legendary Cathars, the persecuted early Christians defeated by the French Crusaders representing the Catholic Church and the King. In the 11th century, the Cathars built a series of spectacular fortified castles high in the foothills of the Pyrenees and they fled here after they were driven out of the cities and towns. On clear days, the dramatic, snowy peaks of the Pyrenees are visible from the villages around Carcassonne. The ruined castles in which the Cathars were besieged for weeks and months perch at breathtaking heights thousands of feet above sea level. Driving through the deep valleys to reach the castles, you pass thick pine forests and alpine lakes, spa towns and rushing whitewater rivers, sometimes travelling on winding roads cut through massive granite mountains that suddenly disappear into rolling fields. It is spectacularly varied country. Carcassonne is the setting for Kate Mosse's bestseller, Labyrinth, that girls' own Holy Grail of a book that has sold millions of copies worldwide. As with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Mosse's thriller covers similar territory (France, grails, secrets, religious conspiracies) but in a dual narrative: through Alice, a presentday English archaeologist, and the hothearted 17yearold heroine, Alais, who lives with her Cathar family within the fortified walls of the Cite (constructed on Roman and Visigoth foundations and fortified by the Cathars in the 11th century). Controversially tarted up by a rich local duke in the second half of the 19th century, the old Cite is still inhabited by families who have lived here for generations (the bulk of Carcassonne's 50,000 residents live on the other side of the Aude River, in the newer part of the city, known as the Bastide SaintLouis).

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