day 6 :

friday, 16 september

After succeeding in buying some gazole (diesel gas in French), we toured the beautiful Gorge de Galamus. There is a small road carved out of the cliff face on one side, and is often only one car wide. It is rather exciting to encounter a car coming the other way, as someone has to figure out how to make room for the other. After the harrowing drive, we arrived at a large parking lot overlooking the gorge, and saw with disbelieving eyes the L'Ermitage Saint Antoine, built into a cliffside hundreds of feet above the bottom of the gorge. We walked the easy path from the lot to the hermitage and relaxed for a moment in the chapel. The chapel is carved deep into the cliff face, with the rock walls keeping the air cool even as sunlight streams into the chamber.

Next, we found ourselves in the land of Rohan. Fictional, you say? Well, the wild landscape of the Aude can easily be mistaken for it; just go visit the Cathar stronghold of Peyrepertuse on top of a mountain ridge, and you'll see what we mean. At every mountain ridge, you'll see another fortress commanding a view of the land. You can just picture the Rohirrim riding across the vast landscape, and signal fires being lit between the ridgetops.

The crumbling ruins of Peyrepertuse were impressive. It's hard to imagine just how many people worked for how many years in order to build this huge fortress at the top of a very tall mountain ridge. We found it to be hard work just walking up the serpentine pathway to see the ruin, but it was well worth exploring and seeing the phenomenal 360-degree view of the Aude from the top of fortress.

After this long day of hiking and sightseeing, we headed to dinner at Auberge du Vieux Puits ("Inn of the Old Wells"), a Michelin 2-star restaurant in Fontjoncousse, not far from our gîte in Cascastel. This was an evening of unexpected amusements - at least, we found them amusing. First, Dawn was given a menu without prices; perhaps that's the tradition in this area, but this is the only restaurant on our whole trip where this happened. Next, we were seated near the kitchen entrance, and we watched the wait staff battle with the sliding door sensor all night. In order to get into the kitchen, you have to wave your hand in front of this decorative little square on the left side of the sliding door. This is particularly challenging if you're carrying something, such as a stack of dishes. If the waiter managed to get the door open (which was a challenge unto itself, sometimes requiring the person to wave their overburdened hand five or six times before the machine detected them), they would nearly collide with someone coming out of the kitchen - this is because the sensor was mounted on the wrong side of the door given normal traffic flow, along with the fact that the door opened from the right. At first glance, it's all a very cute design, but is really an ergonomic atrocity and caused no end of frustration for all of the wait staff. For further amusement, one of the chefs in the kitchen periodically decided to yell loudly at someone in the back, which was mostly muffled to us until the sliding door opened. It was no wonder that the wait staff seemed edgy as they scurried around the vast room of tables. The meal itself was quite nice, but the dessert courses were simply over-the-top: ten different desserts served in two courses. We don't know who could even begin to eat that much dessert after having the rest of the extensive tasting menu.

Some things we'd like to do in the Corbières region the next time we're there:

• Try the Michelin 1-star restaurant Neptune in Collioure.
• Visit more Cathar castles and abbeys - there are 30-some-odd ruins scattered throughout this region.
• Visit some of the Corbières wineries.