Hairpins, Hitchhikers & the OSS – Caudiès-de-Fenouillèdes

“Well, that was an interesting drive,” I said.

I used that special tone of voice.

The one reserved for occasions when you know you’ve narrowly avoided becoming a news headline.

The fortress of Montségur stayed wrapped in so much moody cloud that we didn’t realise there was a path that led to the village below. As we drove The Beast down the slick wet hairpins that had given me an anticipatory sleepless night, we found dry tarmac and stone houses bathed in perfectly civilised visibility.

About thirty minutes into our high altitude odyssey, we picked up a hitchhiker.

Eugénie appeared at the roadside with a rucksack, extending a hopeful thumb. Her face lit up at nailing a lift in such a magnificent and unique vehicle, although her state of elation would not survive the journey.

The Beast’s cab has only two seats.

I was glad I climbed in the back for a couple of reasons:

1. The drive was mildly terrifying.
2. So, I was very relieved we hadn’t shoved Eugénie in there alone.

Eugénie spoke little English, so I conversed with her in French. She was a singer, dancer, and artist, traveling to Perpignan to visit friends and her brother.

Inspired by nature, she said she created birds from refuse and technological waste.

Ruby and Lani had accompanied me. Ruby’s eyes were on stalks throughout, while Lani glued herself to me as though turbulence had been announced.

Holed up in the truck’s rear, I missed much of the scenery. The bits I glimpsed suggested the route had been chiselled into the cliff by someone with a severe grudge against vehicles and only a passing concern for the effects of gravity.

Outside my window there was solid rock, which implied The Beast occupied every available inch of road.

Eugénie was on the OSS – the ‘Oh Shit Side’.

Her window framed a lengthy, emphatic plunge into oblivion.

Just as we were settling into a rhythm of controlled panic, Mark’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie: “I hope there are no tunnels…!”

My heart crashed into my boots.

We’d already abandoned two proposed routes because of low overhangs and tunnels. There was no room for a U-turn, and reversing back up those hairpins would have required divine guidance.

I did my best to maintain my cool, so as not to spook Eugénie. It’s one thing getting into a bind when it’s just the two of you. That’s the unspoken contract of overlanding: whatever happens, you face it together.  

It’s quite another matter to be dodging destiny with a French artist on board.

“Nous sommes en bas.” I reassured her when we finally reached the bottom.

However, our ordeal was not over.

We were just about to enter a village that didn’t believe in width.

Caudiès-de-Fenouillèdes greeted us with blank, rendered walls.

Not picturesque-from-afar walls.

These were wing-mirror-brushing walls: centimetres-from-your-face walls.

A man standing outside his house shouted cheerful encouragement through Mark’s open cab window.

“You won’t get through!”

From behind double-glazed windows, I heard it and understood – so I expect Eugénie did too.

At the far end of the village, a sharp left turn loomed.

I could see we would not make it around.

But Mark is not one to be thwarted.

It took a multitude of shuffles, several held breaths, and two helpful locals who emerged to guide the rear of the truck like ground crew directing a jumbo jet. I crawled onto the bed to peer through the rear windows and delivered a running commentary to Mark via the walkie-talkie. I watched the corner of a pink stucco wall grow and grow until the gap was ‘optimism’ rather than length.  

Then I shouted, “Stop!”

And The Beast made it round.

Eugénie’s eyes had expanded to cartoon proportions.  

We’d planned to drop her in town before going to our park-up under a castle.

“Can we stop, please, so I can get out?” she whispered.

I radioed Mark, but there was nowhere to pull over.

The street was barely wider than the truck itself.

Eventually, we found a gap, and she hopped out. She was still smiling.

Just.

Or maybe it was simply relief that she’d survived.

We’ve had several years to get used to the capabilities of The Beast. Eugénie was straight in at the deep end, on a daunting mountain balcony road.

I suspect Mark was as relieved as Eugénie.

It was a demanding drive to do solo, in the cab with only a walkie-talkie and rising blood pressure for company.

After taking photos with Eugénie, we escaped to a tranquil pine-scented forest and parked beside a waterfall.

After the trauma of the drive, the sound of rushing water felt like applause.

The following day was Bloquons Tout – Block Everything day – called after the French government collapsed in a vote of no confidence. The media warned of strikes, blockades – even sabotage.

We had considered fleeing to Andorra to avoid it, but the weather there was atrocious. Instead, we hid in the hills and hoped the revolution might pass us by.

The morning dawned golden and peaceful. The waterfall burbled. No one was blocking anything nearby.

I’d posted on social media about a recent stay at a lovely campsite in Mirmande and commented, “It feels like we’re on holiday!” A friend replied that on our travels, if every day doesn’t feel like a holiday, we’re doing it wrong.

It’s a tricky one.

We’re not on holiday – we’re living our life.

On holiday, you don’t spend your days calculating bridge heights, debating diesel strategy, plotting water stops, planning laundry logistics, or eyeballing medieval streets to see if you’ll fit.

That’s our daily routine.

But our lifestyle has a huge upside.

Campsites rarely come with bonus castles and your own personal waterfall.

Our morning walk led through olive groves beneath Château de Fizel. The pups were exuberant, as though yesterday’s cliff-edge drama had been merely light entertainment.

After breakfast, we set off up the Gorge de St. Jaume towards Château vicomtal Saint-Pierre de Fenouillet. The climb was ambitious, but we figured that even if we didn’t make the Château, the walk through the gorge would be worth it.

As we joined the footpath, a female guide leading her own walking group down the gorge warned us about the first bridge.

“It has no handrail. But after that, the walk is fine. It is very beautiful.”

We braced for the terror.

I was expecting something far worse than the narrow concrete slab crossing inches above a tiny stream.

The dogs treated it as a racetrack and dashed across repeatedly, as if to make a point.

The gorge‘s embrace was gloriously cool. Wind funnelled between the limestone walls, and spray from the river chilled the air. The water was pale denim blue and as clear as gin. Although there were some sheer drops, The Fab Four found sloping banks that enabled them to paddle in shaded pools. One deeper basin tempted me to deploy my emergency bikini, although given the temperature of the water, I opted to retain circulation in my extremities.

We climbed so gently that we barely registered the altitude gain. The path spat us out close to the hamlet of St. Nauts, next to a beautiful triple waterfall. We spied a prevalence of British number plates dotted around the driveways. I couldn’t blame them. The area was absurdly beautiful.

A steeper section led to the cobbled streets of Fenouillet. I couldn’t believe how close we were to the castle.

Then came the surprise.

As I gazed up at the 11th-century Château Saint-Pierre when Mark said, “Have you seen that?”

“Seen what?”

“Turn around.”

“Oh my word!”

In Fenouillet, there is not just one castle.

There are two!

On a peak opposite, the remains of Château de Sabarda perched on the opposite hill.

The fortresses faced each other across the deep valley like silent sentinels.

We continued up to the ruins of Saint-Pierre, spread across a wide hilltop. We paused several times to catch our breath and take in the remarkable setting.

It would be easy to overlook Saint-Pierre in favour of its more famous neighbours, the royal fortresses of Quéribus and Peyrepertuse. Yet this peaceful hilltop played an important role in Cathar history. The castle was the seat of the Viscounts of Fenouillèdes, and controlled the strategically important valley long before the French Crown turned other nearby peaks into mighty frontier fortresses.

The viscounts were close allies of the Trencavel family of Carcassonne, and staunch supporters of the Cathar faith. During the Albigensian Crusade, Saint-Pierre became the only castle in today’s Pyrénées-Orientales department known to have sheltered Cathar ‘heretics’ fleeing persecution.

For Saint-Pierre, everything changed after the Treaty of Corbeil in 1258. As the frontier shifted, Sabarda’s lofty, easily defensible crag became more valuable than Saint-Pierre’s broad, exposed plateau. The older castle was dismantled and fell into disuse, its remaining stones gradually reclaimed by the hillside.

Today, its weathered ruins offer something rather special. A rare glimpse of a medieval feudal stronghold before the royal engineers transformed castles into the vast military machines we would soon encounter at Quéribus and Peyrepertuse.

From the top of the jagged remnants of Saint-Pierre’s tower, the view swept far beyond the fallen bastions to chalky summits and crags, surrounded by lush green folds of countryside. With one castle beneath and another one facing us, we simply stood and soaked up the atmosphere. By accident, we’d stumbled upon a missing link in the story of Cathar country.

We skipped the circular route home. It would have returned us via an exposed cliff-top in full sun, so we retraced our steps in the cool shadow of the gorge.

In both directions, The Pawsome Foursome mercifully failed to notice two cats sunbathing on the rocky steps that connected the castle and the village.

Although we followed the same path, a change of direction often grants a different perspective. Below, the river still flashed silver-blue, but we noticed new limestone peaks and spires of rock peeping through the lush foliage.

It’s funny how quickly the terrifying bits fade when they’re replaced by something extraordinary.

Twenty-four hours on, I wasn’t thinking about hairpins, narrow streets, or reversing a 16-tonne behemoth up a mountain.

All that remained was the sense that we’d had another unforgettable experience – one that would never have happened if we’d played it safe.

The panic had already become a memory; a story to laugh about.

Looking back, I mused that if every day felt like a holiday, we’d probably be doing it wrong.

Join us next time as we head for the magnificent royal fortress of Quéribus.

Did You Miss?

Below are links to the other posts in my Cathar Country series about the Languedoc in Southern France.

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Image – Château de Quéribus PhilippeContal, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.