Our Love Affair with France Part 2

So, we had made it to the wonderful Aux Anges Gardiens. André and Patricia Le Du made us feel welcome from the start and we soon became fast friends. One of the best things about moving to France will be knowing they will be our neighbours - well, sort of!

Patricia is an excellent cook, and her breakfasts are quite frankly legendary. Lashings of homemade pastries, fresh bread from the bakery, local cheeses, fresh fruit and yoghurt - everything you need to set you up for a day of Cathar Castle hunting.

One of the reasons I so wanted to got to Carcassonne for my fortieth was because Aidan and I had been reading Kate Mosse's Citadel Trilogy. I'd first read Labyrinth some years earlier, but had begun re-reading it when I ran out of things to read. I got wrapped up in the story, a cleverly woven tale set in both 2005 and 1209 in and around Carcassonne and the Languedoc. It is about a young woman called Alice whose life changes when she discovers a forgotten cave containing 2 skeletons and a ring engraved with the image of a labyrinth, that is also on the wall of the cave, and the history of an ancestor Alaïs.

I passed it on to Aidan and I checked online to see if Mosse had written anything else since, and discovered Sepulchre and Citadel which we both enjoyed just as much as we had the first book in the trilogy, and so the need to go to Carcassonne and to go on a book location tour was born.

One of the key sites in the stories is the mountain-top citadel of Montségur. It is quite a climb, and I didn't know exactly what was wrong with me back then. I just knew I got tired and suffered all kinds of fallout from the simplest of activities, but I had decided that getting to the top to see the château was something I was going to do - whatever it cost me!

So, we made our way to the car park at the bottom of the mountain (well, it's kind of part of the way up - you just have to walk the last, really steep bit!) Unfortunately the mountain was wreathed in fog, and so we couldn't even see the castle, so reluctantly headed off and went in search of something else to do that day, only to return the next day to try again.

I hate having my photograph taken, and most of our holiday pictures (if they have either of us at all in them) are of Aidan - usually on a bridge, as that has become a rather odd tradition we've taken on over the years. This picture of me is one of the rarities, proudly standing in one of the doorways of the castle, to prove I made it. I was flushed and breathless pretty much the whole way up - but I made it, without spraining either ankle, or subluxing any other joints, and without an asthma attack!

The views out over the Languedoc were incredible. It is such a varied landscape, and over the last few days of our holiday Aidan and I packed in as many castles as we could on our Cathar chateaux hunt! On this trip, we made it to Peyrepertuse, Quéribus, d'Arques, Puivert and Puilarens. Not surprisingly I needed a really long rest when I got home. I think I crashed out for about a month when we got home, but I didn't regret one bit of it!

It didn't take us long to get withdrawal symptoms. We'd both been to France before. Aidan had been skiing in both the Pyrenees and in the Alps. I'd been on French exchanges and on tour with the orchestra I played in when I was younger, where I got to play in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Chartres Cathedral, and this really cute private theatre in a palace I can't remember the name of. We'd been camping in Normandy, the Loire Valley and the Dordogne just a few years earlier - but this time, we simply couldn't wait to get back.

We've visited every year, sometimes twice a year ever since... and now, we're thinking of staying forever!