And so we’ve arrived at Cassaignes (I’m writing this on the 10th). We drove yesterday from Saint-Jean-du-Gard, a fairly easy drive in comparison to some of the ones we made in the days before, a drive that took us south and west in Languedoc-Cassaignes, past Montpelier. K. and W. took back roads instead of the interstate for most of the trip, and it was wonderful to see the countryside, which soon changed from the heavily wooded countryside of the Cévennes to vineyard following vineyard as the climate seemed to become hotter and drier the further south and west we drove. The plantings of Russian sage I first saw in Provence are everywhere in southern France, too, and in Languedoc-Roussillon, beautiful roses in many gardens and, in one village we drove through, framing a doorway and blooming so profusely that at first they seemed artificial.
We stopped along the way at a bakery, a chain — Marie Blachère, it’s called — in Capestang and bought bread to bring with us to W. and K.’s cottage. As I wrote in Facebook when I shared photos from the baker,
To stop at a pastry shop in France is to face formidable temptation. This is a bakery (a chain) in Capestang in Occitania where we stopped to buy bread as we near the village where our friends' cottage is located. And, of course, coffee, pain au chocolat, and a delicious raisin-and-apple-filled pastry that resembles cinnamon rolls in shape.
Soon after the bakery stop, W. spotted a fruit and vegetable stand where he stopped and bought some tomatoes, parsley, apricots, and cherries, and where Steve, who insisted on paying as we absolutely must do, spotted some good local red and white wine and bought a bottle of Domaine Pierre Cabanes Minervois Trait Rouge and one of Gérard Bertrand 6ème Sens Blanc, at the low prices of €7 for one bottle and €8 for the other.
When we drove through Carcassonne, W. and K. insisted that we stop and have K. take us on a brief tour of the castle and town, while W. waited with the car in the car park. There was a tour bus of young adolescents speaking what sounded like Catalan, chattering like magpies as we walked from the car to the castle. As we walked around, I heard French, German, Spanish, English: the city was crowded with people sitting outside at the many covered eating areas in front of restaurants, with smells of frying fish, onions, and other delicious delicacies wafting through the air. Sign after sign in front of restaurants offered cassoulet, a specialty of this region.
We saw only the outside of the castle as we walked around part of it, and then we took one of the old gateways into the castle to walk through to the town, to shops, restaurants, and tourists aplenty. K. took us into the basilica, whose stained-glass windows are amazing, with such rich vibrant colors, blues, reds, yellows.
Because the man who often sells tablecloths from southern France is not always at the market in Limoux to which K. and W. will take us today (the 10th), K. suggested that if we wanted to buy one or more of those colorful tablecloths, we might buy them at one of the shops in Carcassonne that stock them. And so we did, picking out two in different colors, one yellow, the other lavender, with a nice, smiling young man assisting us.
Cassaignes: the sweet smell of gorse (genet in French, Ginster in German) all through the air, interwoven with the smell of the linden tree shading W. and K.’s enclosed patio and eating area across from their house; the beautiful bright yellow of the gorse on the hillside as one climbs to the village; the stuccoed walls of houses and farm buildings, some with brightly painted doors; the cooing of pigeons as night falls; the cool drafts of air from the surrounding mountains, though the sun is fierce. The village, which is in the Corbières mountains, “pre-Pyrenees” mountains, has some 60 people and is very quiet, perched high on a hill with the Pyrenees ringing it on the south and west.
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