Where the Roads Can Take You

The roads in France vary a great deal.  They go from multi-laned motorways to narrow country roads hardly big enough on which to drive a French car--let alone meet one along the way.  When we first arrived in Toulouse at the airport, we got our rental car and immediately hooked up our newly acquired GPS with a French card in it.  Thankfully, Ellie, an American living in France, had recommended that we have one.  If not for the GPS, we would have never found any of the places in which we were going. As we left Toulouse, a metropolitan area of 1.1 million people, it was a little tense until we actually got on a motorway heading south towards Carcassonne.

The walled medieval city of Carcassonne is a truly impressive town and a magnet for visitors to the Languedoc Roussillon in the South of France. The city features the largest medieval fortress of its kind in France.  It sports 26 towers, ramparts, a castle, drawbridges, and a basilica. It's no wonder Walt Disney based the castle in The Sleeping Beauty on this medieval city!

Carcassonne is an ancient city and more than 2000 years old.  In 800 B.C. the site on a hill called Carsac, was situated south of the city.  This hill was a strategic place, on the crossroads of the ways from the Atlantic, from the Mediterranean, and from Spain. Today, Carcassonne has a population of 47,000, although this number swells in the summer months when the city is packed with tourists taking in the city’s unique atmosphere. This is the closest big town to Quillan about 45 minutes away. It has an airport, train station, and lots of shopping!

Looking up towns on a map, calculating distance, and looking at terrain does not happen to be my strength.  Thus, our house hunting in Axat, which was only a little tiny distance from Quillan on the map, became a harrowing journey through rock canyons, narrow roads, sheer drop-offs, and the chance meeting of a logging truck around a hairpin curve!  Imagine yourself on the top of the Empire State Building walking on a 6" window ledge and then you will begin to experience the lovely trip from Quillan to Axat.

Yes, the car in front of us, in this photo, is Helen our real estate agent. She drives this road a lot and now we know why she has a few dents and scrapes! Needless-to-say, we found some beautiful homes at bargain prices in this area--but the thought of driving this road to get to the supermarket was just a little more than we could handle.  The locals in Quillan call it the "gorge" and we can see why!