Chapter 15
Labastide Esparbairenque
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Country
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Mas-Cabardès
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Haut Cabardès
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-From wikapedia
Barry
drove in silence. Marie gawked at the
glorious countryside and mountainscapes they passed. Up on twin wooded mountain peaks which their
road took them between, she could see the ruins of two ancient castles.
“Oooh
… I loved ruined castles,” she mused quietly, more to herself than her guide,
“and there’s two of them right there.”
“Four
actually, you just can’t see the other two from the road. Those are the ruined Cathar fortresses of
Lastours,” her driver said, breaking his hour long silence. “I’ll take you in the next few days if you’d
like to see them up close. I find them
just wonderful … but I’ve always had a thing for ruins and overgrown forgotten
habitations of all sorts.”
“Me
too, and I would love to check out the castles here if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Sure,
in a couple of days, we’ll check it out.
There’s a team of archeologists up there on an excavation, you can watch
them at work too, it’s pretty neat.”
“Cool.
Is it far from the chateau?”
“I
guess you’ll find out in just a few minutes, won’t you?” Allen said with a wry
smile.
A
few more twists of the road and old stone dwellings became more and more
frequent, until a full village was around them.
“This is Roquefere, this is where the closest restaurants and store are to us, though there’re places to buy eggs, honey, and fresh veggies from the
locals in our village, and we get a bread truck, a butcher truck, and a grocery
truck on different days every week. And,
I can take you down to Carcassonne whenever you need to do proper
American-style shopping.”
By
the time he was finished speaking the tiny village was already behind them.
“Not
far now,” he promised.
In
just moments drive or so … up … up … up the mountain Marie saw the sign: ”Labastide
Esparbairengue”.
Stone
walls that must have been hundreds of years old held the mountains back in
various places. Old stone houses with
terracotta roofs, flanked by gardens stood here and there. Vegetables and flowers grew in small stone
shrouded gardens, across the valley she could see more gardens and orchards
held in terraced plots held up by more ancient stone walls. In another twist of the road the village was
clear: a maze of tightly knitted buildings, none clearly newer than a few
hundred years at the minimum.
Barry
slowed the car and turned down a narrow street, and pointed to the right, “This
is what passes for the village square, though it’s more an overlook with a few
benches. This is where the food trucks
stop. Sometimes they ring their horns, sometimes they don’t. I think we have the schedule on the fridge in
the kitchen.”
Marie
was in awe of the pastoral beauty and simplicity of the place. Roses flowered and vines crawled over some of
the buildings, bees, she noticed buzzed about their pollen collection work.
“It’s
so lovely here.” Marie said in quiet amazement.
“Well
it beats New Jersey,” He smiled, “in my opinion.”
He
stopped the car in front of a very large stone building, “This is it.”
copyright 2017 Diana Hignutt
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