A Glimpse of Cathar Country

Ariège has a ton of interesting chateaus, castles and ruins that date back to the 13th century.  Although these sites have long archeological histories, many of them were defined by a short period of time of religious persecution, the effects of which may still be seen on today's landscape.  

Catharism was a sect of Christianity that contradicted certain fundamental Catholic doctrine during the middle ages.  As a result, Pope Innocent III declared Catharism a heresy and authorized a crusade in order to eliminate the opposition to the Catholic Church.  The Cathars, a great many of whom lived in the southeast of France, were hunted down and brutally murdered (usually by being burnt alive).  In order to fend off the crusaders, many Cathar fled to seemingly impenetrable fortified chateaus atop rocky buttresses.  

Living in this Ariège, it is impossible not to notice these buildings towering over the landscape below.  Many of them have fallen into disrepair of the centuries, some were destroyed by the crusaders, and fewer still remain relatively intact (or were reconstructed), but all of them have a fascinating story which has been awesome to explore.  

Elise and Hanan exploring and imagining what the Chateau of Roquefixade, a Cathar stronghold near Foix, might have looked like 700 years ago.  

Elise and Hanan trying to imagine what it would be like to get a clear photo of the elusive Colorado mountain troll. 

Fêtes des Fleurs - Cazères

Continuing the tradition of local festivals, last weekend was the annual Fêtes des Fleurs in Cazères, which consists of a variety of activities, including a parade of floats adorned with flowers.  Despite being small, the parade was fun and entertaining. In sharp contrast to American parades, where the parade route is guarded vehemently by police and barriers, the Fêtes des Fleurs parade was relaxed, low key and hardly regulated. 

In fact, much of the parade seemed to consist of people just enjoying themselves, like this group of ladies, who were walking along, laughing and having a good time and seemed somewhat oblivious to the fact that they were in the middle of a parade.  Here they stopped for a quick snapshot, before continuing on to the next camera person who was waiting another 5 feet down the road.  

I milled in and out of the paraders for most of the time, which was far more fun than just standing in a crowd of sweaty people, trying to look over someone's shoulder to see the floats roll by.  Granted, we were in a small town, with a small parade and this may not be representative of the greater French culture, but I would say that it was refreshing.

Lots of stuff going on...

Things are a bit hectic around here for the moment, but we've been doing lots of cool stuff and will post things in more detail as we get more time.  But, for now, a few pics...

A weekly market in Rieux Volvestre. Steph and Elise picking through the produce and learning how to manage market crowds/lines.

We also went to a "Vide Grenier," which translates literally as "empty the attic".  It is basically the French equivalent of a town wide yard sale, where people try to sell all the random junk that have been collecting dust for the last who knows how long.  Needless to say, there are a ton of intriguing and slightly bizarre objects that appear...everything from clothes, to climbing shoes (size 42 Mythos if anyone is interested), to religious relics, dishes, rusty tools... the list is endless.  This ice axe thermometer caught my eye because it seemed lonely and out of place among all of the other, very clearly non-climber objects. 

The Vide Grenier is also excellent for people watching.  We happened to see this couple dressed up as clowns, who proceeded to randomly approach people and do clown things much to the amusement of everyone around, especially Elise and I.  In fact, we both stopped at the exact same time to take a photo of them.  I would say that clowns are not a normal occurrence, but it was indubitably entertaining nonetheless. 

Back on the Wagon Again...Sort of...

Living in Castex has been awesome for a lot of things, however, climbing has more or less fallen by the wayside.  In many ways, it has been liberating to see a variety of different things and to experience a completely different facet of life.  On the other hand, it is incredibly frustrating to go climbing, only to be able to wheeze your way up a warm up, with no hope in the world to climb the 30 meter line of tufas out the middle of a beautiful cave.   

Without a doubt, gardening, home improvements and eating complete baguettes smothered in Nutella are not effective cross training methods.  In fact, if you eat enough baguettes and kill enough time pushing a law mower around, you will indubitably turn soft and get bizarre tan lines. 

Uncomfortable realization of the day:  doing any number of pull-ups is really hard.  Remedy: Steph's brand new B-day present... A pull up bar. 

Thus, we begin at the bottom once again:
Tonight's workout (barely achieved): 

• 3 sets of 10 pull-ups
• 2 sets of 3 lever lifts

On the up side... The Flight of the Concords skits helped add a little more humor to our humorously pathetic workout.  Thought we should share one of the skits...

Impressive vid of Iceland

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

A Thursday Promenade

Similar to the weather back in Colorado, the weather here has been rainy, cloudy, (snowy at times) and much colder than normal.  According to Patricia, the local weather expert, this is pretty out of character, and the end is in sight, which we're super excited about.

That being said, we have found that cloudy, rainy, miserable weather is excellent for going on exploratory drives of Ariège.  Thursday, we decided to drive south past Foix toward the Spanish border.  We joked that we could drive to Andorra (a tiny country tucked in the Pyrenees, between Spain & France) for a quick cup of coffee before a dinner engagement with an English couple on the other side of Castex.  We laughed, thinking it was actually a totally absurd idea, but set off to explore anyway.  Shortly after driving through Foix, we found ourself faced with the dilemma of actually driving to Andorra, which lay an hour or less further, or turning south toward the small town of Niaux and unknown sites along the small roads at the base of the Pyrenees.  We chose the small roads...

Our route is marked in Green above.

The first stop along a winding road came after Steph had to repeatedly tell me to keep my eyes on the road because I was gawking too much at all the limestone cliffs everywhere.  After seeing a giant cave not far off the road, we had to pull over and investigate.  Ironically, it turns out that people have been visiting this particular site for quite a while, and we weren't the first people to be drawn to it's towering opening.  After putzing around on narrow side roads and a brief pit stop at a smaller cave, we realized we were at the famous Grotte De Niaux which is a prehistoric site dating to the Magdalenian era of the Upper Paleolithic period (around 18,000 - 10,000 Before Present).  

The site boasts a number of prehistoric paintings, but also serves as an interesting timeline of human history up to the present day.  Along with ancient rock art, the cave walls provide glimpses (amusing at times) into countless generations of inhabitants.  In "recent" history, there are scrawlings dating back to the 1600's, including a newer entry that proclaims, "Ici, j'ai perdu mon pucelage à l'age de 13 ans".  (Here I lost my virginity at the age of 13).  

One of the things I find most fascinating and enriching about exploring France is the visible depth of history.  While the Colorado has archeology dating back to at least the Clovis time period (11,500 BP +/-), it is extremely difficult to see.  The ancient history is normally hidden & buried under feet of dirt, like the Lindenmeier Site just north of Fort Collins.   Looking at dirt mounds and imagining what it would have been like is ok, but actually getting to stand where someone painted a bison with a twig 18,000 years ago is spectacular. 

Needless to say, our Thursday visit to the Grotte De Niaux was slightly hindered by a bus load of middle school kids from Andorra who were running around like crazy and had filled all the tour space.  We're hoping to return soon (maybe with Elise?) and check the grotte out in full detail.  In the mean time, here are a few pics...

A small grotte just before you get to the main entrance to the Grotte De Niaux.

The entrance to the caves.  I don't fully know what the building is on the right.  It seems to be a visitor center of some sort, but I'm not exactly sure what the story is behind the architecture or why it was built here.  We'll do more research and report back.  As a little bit of scale, you can just see the top of a tour bus on the left side of the frame.  If it weren't a major historical site, the cave would have a ton of amazing routes out it. 

View of adjacent town from the Grotte.

After noodling around at the Grotte, we made our way back onto our promenade itenerary (if there is such a thing, and headed farther south toward the Pyrenees before contouring west along the foothills.  Before long, the road became smaller once again and the persistent drizzle turned to a fog.  Houses and other attractions would appear and disappear with equal aplomb, including this roadside waterfall that was overflowing.  

Shortly after stopping to gawk at the waterfall, the snow began to fall, then get heavier, then it began to blow sideways, and I wondered if we had been somehow teleported back to Colorado.  The road seemed to wind on forever, switchbacking up and up...into more snow and less signs of civilization.  We finally summited and I saw an obscure sign that said Port something or other....  I'm not spectacular at French by any means, but I thought "Port" meant "Port"...as in the place where there is lots of water and boats...  Looking around, there was lots of water (in various stages), but no boats.  Perhaps that is a funny French way of saying bobsled?  The road after the "Port" seemed to certainly resemble a bobsled run a little bit...maybe they were on to something.

Merry 13th of May.  We saw a Santa Clause on someone's door the other day.  It's not quite as funny and out of place now.  :)

Nearing the end of the snow.

The houses seemed to change with the landscape as well.  The closer we got to the Pyrenees, the more they became Chalets, to the point where I felt like I was in the Swiss alps rather than in Southern France.  I'm amazed by how France has an amazing amount of diversity within such a small area.  The rest of the drive was excellent, including a cool sideroad with tunnels, but I'll let Steph tell that one...