Down through France: a Cathedral, Castles and Cathars

Thursday 10 November – Thursday 17 November 2022

From Nonancourt, where we were at the end of our last post, we continued our journey south, stopping at the city of Chartres to visit the cathedral and have a general look round.

From the free motorhome parking area, it was about a half hour walk into the city centre. We’d passed through quite a bit of fog on our way to Chartres so were wondering if we’d get a clear view of the cathedral; thankfully the mist was hanging high enough up that only the tips of the steeples were partially obscured by it:

According to our DK Eyewitness France guide, “Chartres has the greatest Gothic cathedral in Europe”.

The outside of the cathedral didn’t strike me as “Wow, look at that”, but there were certain aspects that were amazing.

Chartres Cathedral was begun in 1020 but destroyed by fire in 1194. Only small parts survived, and the cathedral was then rebuilt between 1194 and 1230.

The west portal, dating from the middle of the twelfth century, survived the fire:

Inside, the nave is very attractive. The scaffolding on the right is for ongoing restoration and glass cleaning:

The stone choir screen is impressive. It’s 6 metres high, 100 metres long and took just over 200 years to complete (from 1514 to 1716):

The other thing that really stood out was the stained glass.

The three panels in the centre of the window below (showing Mary dressed in blue on a red background) were rescued from the fire in 1194 (and date back the the mid 12th century; the rest of the window is 13th century):

Overall, we thought that Chartres Cathedral was well worth a visit. The only comedy came when Mark found a €5 note on the floor. I suggested that it might be a test and that perhaps he’d better stick it in a donation box rather than risk SOK being hit by thunderbolts from above. Mark looked thoughtful then started looking round for a donation box.

There weren’t any general donation boxes nearby so the €5 note went into a collection box next to a rather sorry looking doll-like figure. It turns out on rereading the Chartres entry in our book later that this was “Our Lady of the Pillar” and is actually quite important…..

We could have spent the night where we were parked at Chartres but opted instead to drive on a bit further south. Our plan was to stay at an aire on the outskirts of Blois then walk into the centre the next day to look at the Château Royal and other sights. When we got the the aire, though, it was a) very run down-looking, b) completely empty, and c) only about half a mile from a traveller encampment that we’d driven past on the way there.

We decided to give that a miss and drove about 10 km to a really nice free village aire next to a pond…

Overnight: Chouzy sur Cisse near Blois

We rethought our plans and, not having come up with any good parking options for Blois, decided to ditch it completely for now and head instead to the Château de Chambord just a few kilometres away. Arriving first thing in the morning, we had time for a jog round the grounds before visiting the château itself after lunch.

The Château de Chambord was built as a hunting lodge for King Francis I, a contemporary of “our” King Henry VIII. It’s some hunting lodge….

It’s a pity that they’ve got scaffolding up here too; the roof was apparently supposed to look like the skyline of Constantinople. We got a bit of an idea from the other side of the building and from the roof terrace:

The huge lantern on the roof sits on top of Chambord’s most impressive feature: a huge central double-helix staircase that may or may not have been designed by Leonardo da Vinci:

Francis I’s emblem, a salamander, is everywhere:

The building seems to have been empty and unused for the vast majority of its life. Some areas have been set out as they might have been back in Francis’ day. There were also sections with information on hunting (presidential hunts took place at Chambord right up until 2010), a 19th century Count of Chambord who might have become King Henry V of France if history had gone his way and, most interestingly, the evacuation of art works from Paris during the Second World War. The Château de Chambord became the largest repository of such works.

Our parking ticket at Chambord gave us 24 hours’ parking. Lots of other motorhomes were clearly staying overnight in the spacious, quiet car park, and so we did likewise.

Overnight: car park at Château de Chambord

We left Chambord on Saturday morning to drive the couple of hours or so down past Bourges to Noirlac Abbey near the town of Saint-Amand-Montrond.

Noirlac Abbey was a Cistercian abbey founded in 1136. The buildings on the site date back to the 12th-14th centuries, although we couldn’t tell what was original and what might be a result of the “restoration” carried out between 1950 and 1980.

The information we were given was very light on detail about the Cistercian order or the history of this particular abbey. For example, we have no idea how many monks lived here at its height (or indeed when that height took place). Thankfully, we’ve visited enough ruined Cistercian abbeys in the UK to have a general idea of how it all worked.

A brief timeline in the information leaflet we were given included the following intriguing entry:

“End of the 15th century: the community of Noirlac faces a deep moral crisis. There are records of an apostate monk as well as of a murderer within the community“

All very Umberto Eco….

Unfortunately, no further information was provided but an internet search brought up a 1972 paper* which revealed that brother Guillame le Doux (“Billy the Softy”?) killed brother Reginald by hitting him several times. I have a mental image of a (probably silent – he’s a Cistercian) bully Reginald being suddenly surprised one day when the proverbial worm turned….

*Dimier A. Violences, rixes et homicides chez les Cisterciens. Revue des Sciences Religieuses, volume 46 (1), 1972. pp. 38-57.

Overnight: Lac de Virlay, Saint-Amand-Montrond

Our aire for Saturday night was only a couple of kilometres down the road from Noirlac Abbey. The motorhome parking area, behind a barrier, was absolutely fine (costing €7.32 for 24 hours) and although we couldn’t see the lake from the van, it was only a couple of minutes’ walk away:

On Sunday morning, we jogged two laps of the lake (5 miles including a lap of the car park at the end to make up the distance). After sorting out ourselves and the van, we drove to the Carrefour supermarket just round the corner. The shop had closed for the day by that point (only opening in the morning on Sundays) so we had the car park and, more importantly, the Revolution Laundry washing facilities to ourselves.

Overnight: Durat Larequille

After Saint-Amand-Montrand, our next overnight stop was at a place called Durat Larequille. Here we had a clearly brand new village motorhome aire all to ourselves:

There was a boulangerie right at the bottom of the car park. Mark went off to check the opening times – closed on Mondays….. Oh well……

We’d decided to hop quite a bit further south on Monday rather than continuing to trundle south at a snail’s pace. We had an hour’s drive to Riom near Clermont Ferrand where a huge Carrefour supplied us with food, LPG and diesel, then a couple of hours down the (free) motorway towards Millau.

We stopped for a quick look at the Gabarit Viaduct on the way, built by Gustave Eiffel in 1884 (and very similar to one he’d previously done in Porto, Portugal):

We got plenty of information about the construction from the information boards in a small visitor centre.

After leaving the motorway, it was back onto minor roads for us for the half an hour or so to the free motorhome aire at the town of Bozouls.

Overnight: Bozouls

We’ve been to Bozouls before though we didn’t recognise the motorhome aire. We decided that it was probably in the same place as when we visited a few years ago, but just looked different due to some clearly recent landscaping that’s been done.

Bozouls itself is a small town right on the edge of a gorge:

We had a good wander around before leaving on Tuesday morning.

To choose a destination for Tuesday night, we’d looked at a few aires around 2 – 2 1/2 hours south of Bozouls. The aire at Mazamet jumped out; the photos included one of a bridge that Mark would definitely want to go to!

We arraived at Mazamet at 2.30 pm and set off straight away. The information we had was that we had a steep uphill walk to a footbridge, constructed in 2018. On the other side was a medieval village to look at. That sounded good for an afternoon’s excursion so off we went.

The view from just before the footbridge:

Mark crossing the footbridge:

The information that we’d read online didn’t mention another steep climb on the other side of the bridge! Nor did it mention that the village of Hautpoul was a Cathar stronghold during the Albigensian crusade in the early 13th century.

The castle:

The medieval village:

The view from the very top:

Overnight: Mazamet

The aire we stayed on at Mazamet is part of the Camping Car Park group of aires. We already had a membership card from our last trip, so we just had to pay €12.50 which included the luxury of mains electricity, the first time we’ve had any since leaving home.

After one encounter with the Cathars at Hautpoul, we had another on Wednesday at the Châteaux de Lastours. We were now in Cathar Castle country. The castles weren’t built by the Cathars; basically, they were held by local lords who, when the French King and the Pope ganged up on the so-called heretics, allowed them to take refuge in their pretty inaccessible fortresses.

At Lastours, there are 4 castles in a row on a ridgeline. Unfortunately, they’re not the same castles that were there at the time of the Cathars. Back then, there were 3 castles on the side of the hill, each with a village below it.

The castles were attacked by the crusaders in 1210 and finally submitted in 1211, before the local lords regained control in the 1220s. Lastours was then a key focal point of resistance to the crusade until 1229.

We visited the remains of one of the villages:

The visitor centre contained a number of really impressive items on display that have been found in archaeological excavations at the site. Here are my two favourites, a key and a chessman (both late 12th – early 13th century):

The chessman is apparently a King or a Queen (the circular mark on top of the head supposedly representing a crown). It does definitely look like a man in a barrel to me though….

Overnight: Lapradelle Puilaurens

For Thursday night, we returned to an aire we’ve been to twice before at Lapradelle Puilaurens.

The car park next to the fire station isn’t really anything special, but there is free water and emptying facilities, and a great view of the Château de Puilaurens on the ridge line opposite (more Cathars; we’ve visited that castle in the past).

This morning (Friday), we had a short drive to our final Cathar encounter for this trip at the Château de Quéribus.

The involvement of Quéribus during the main period of the Albigensian Crusade isn’t clear, but it became the final refuge of the remaining Cathars once all of the other castles had fallen. The French King didn’t take control of the castle until the 1250s, after which some changes were made over time – so the castle we visited is essentially a mixture of features from different periods.

The view from the top (SOK looks tiny!):

From Quéribus, it was little over an hour’s drive to…. the Mediterranean! We have arrived!

Overnight: Argelès sur Mer

We’ve parked up in a free “tolerated” parking area next to the port of Argelès sur Mer and had a wander round the town.

There’s a nice long promenade for our morning jog tomorrow (the boards in the photo below are a photographic and art exhibition of wildlife in Svalbard):

Argelès sur Mer is a bit of a ghost town at this time of year, with streets of shops all shuttered for the winter. From the sheer proliferation of shops, eating establishments etc, we can only imagine that it must be hellishly busy here during the main summer season.

So that’s it for our journey south through France…. Tomorrow’s plan is a jog along the promenade then onwards…. to Spain.