I haven’t really explained in this tale why it was that Carcassonne was on my itinerary: it was purely sentimental, a profound nod to a friend of mine who died a couple of years ago.

In retrospect I don’t think I ever really knew why it was Anna went to Carcassonne back in 1991 with a friend of hers after they visited Paris for the first time ever; all I knew for sure was that she held it as one of the joys of her adult life and had some wistfully lovely photographs of their visit to the Old City and the Citadel that rainy March day. After her death I became the de facto caretaker of her personal effects, notably her photographs and papers, and I spent a long time looking over the pictures from the Carcassonne trip, trying to determine what it was that had pleased her so. Even the quick-scribble pocket notebook in which she documented the trip didn’t tell me much. So I determined that one day I would go there and see for myself. When Ian suggested I meet him in Paris, I had my excuse, plus an opportunity to get a “Paris fix” as well.

Upon arrival in Carcassonne, I immediately started walking southeast, toward the Old City, because some ways beyond that was the only Etap Hôtel in town, and to pay only €33 per night for lodging was worth the hike. I got there, got a room, dropped off my bags, and walked back down the road to the Old City, thinking it would all be closing up for the evening (it was late afternoon by this time). Instead I discovered that the Old City itself is actually still an inhabited, lively place, and that it was the Citadel *proper* that had an admission charge, whereas the ramparts and the lists (the grassy lawns between the outer and inner walls) were completely open, as far as I could tell, day and night.

So, though I had meant to save the formal “this is for you, Anna” pilgrimage until the next morning (hoping to get a bit of the foggy chill that had characterized the photos of her visit), I found myself walking the ramparts and, in time, recognizing the views and discerning the spots from where she’d taken various photos. And I grinned a lot as I did so, because I felt like she was near, showing me around…I hadn’t felt her as a presence in my mind much since I moved to Beacon Hill in autumn of last year, so this was a treat.

Overall, though, my verdict on Carcassonne would have to be that it is dull. Once you’ve visited the Citadel and the lovely St Nazaire basilica nearby (which I did the next morning), there really isn’t a whole lot else to see in town, nor is there much park space to just sit with a sandwich and read a paper, as I discovered after walking almost to the city’s southwestern outskirts in fruitless search for such a place. In the end I got my best Carcassonne experience (other than the Old City ones and the dinner at La Massilia later that night) outside of town: I noticed on one of my dinky tourist maps of the town that there was a ruined chapel southwest of the hotel, evidently up the beginnings of the lightly forested slopes I had been eyeing thoughtfully from my window (which also looked across the street at a police training facility, actually), and that the upper slopes were apparently partly an arboretum. So, after viewing a small but nice exhibit of Carpeaux’s sculptural work (copies and studies, mostly) and a not-quite-lifeless sequence of rooms full of paintings (both at the Musée des Beaux Arts), I set out for the slopes.

Although I never found the ruined chapel (just a marker indicating where there had been a chapel, but this was on the other side of the highway from where it was indicated on the map), I decided the day was still quite pleasant and would be bright and clear for several more hours, and I continued up the road (Chemin de la Porte de Fer) and entered the arboretum. I wandered on the upper parts of the hill for an hour or two, enjoying the clear fresh air and the beautiful views of the Pyrenees and the broad valley of the Aude river. And then as dusk descended I spent an hour trying to figure out how to get back to town other than by the route I’d entered by.

I finally got back to the hotel around 8:30 after descending via the Montlegun suburb east of Carcassonne, walking along the cemetery road and through the megastore sprawl near the hotel. I felt much refreshed—nibbling on wild thyme on a rustic hilltop near sunset will have that effect, you know—and walked to the “new” part of town in hopes of having better luck for dinner than I’d had the night before (the gizzard salad incident).

And as I describe in the sidebar, I hit the jackpot with la Massilia, which turned the night into a joy. Walking back to the hotel much later, radiant with contentment, I looked at the splendid floodlit Citadel glowing orange across the Aude…and I looked up at the shimmering net of stars above and said “Anna’s there, she’s those stars looking down on me having this lovely night in a town I went to because of her. Good.” And I reached my hotel and hit the hay.

The next morning I trudged the 30-minute walk back to the train station at a decent pace (considering my baggage) and caught a train to…well, I wasn’t really sure where, yet, just anywhere in Bretagne would do.

I had by this time concluded that this southern-France weather was not for me (I prefer rain, and snow), so I was going to the northwest of the country where I would be guaranteed some stormy Atlantic weather. I figured Brest would be the ticket…but, speaking of tickets, I didn’t have sufficient timetables at Carcassonne to plan the day’s travel without consulting the ticket office and getting more formal about everything, so I chose to just wing it (an option the Eurail pass makes quite handy).

I passed through Toulouse and got the chorus of Zebda’s song “Matabiau” stuck in my head as the train paused in that station. I was in Bordeaux for all of five minutes and decided that was fine for this trip (as was the case with the Mediterranean…some things you just know you shouldn’t rush or try before the signs are right). Passing over the Garonne, I was struck by what a big, muddy mess of a river it was…but then the Rhône didn’t look much better near its mouth either. And finally my luck ran out when I found myself at the end of that train’s line: Saintes.

I had a 1.5-hour layover in Saintes before any train would take me to Bretagne, and everything I’ve read about Saintes since this trip indicates that I must have seen it on a bad day. It was deathly dull—the midday inertia had set in and very few people were out and moving—and I couldn’t find anywhere to eat or even an open store where I could buy food, so I visited a little church there (lugging my bags with me) and walked around feeling like I was in a Twilight Zone episode. It felt like the city was taking its siesta, only this was no southern-French city and therefore had no business behaving that way (in my eyes). It was a relief to get back on the train again.

Unfortunately it turned out that I couldn’t get to Brest by train that day—I could have if I’d taken a slightly later train out of Bordeaux—and that the end of the line for this train was a city named Quimper, just south of Brest, and it wouldn’t get there until about 9:00 that night. For the next five hours or so of that train trip, I compulsively pulled out my map, studied the locations of the various cities along the train’s route, contemplated which would offer the highest probability of stormy coastal Atlantic weather despite the relentlessly sunny country-wide forecast, and put away the map again without having decided anything.

So it was with some hesitation and gnawing uncertainty that I stayed on the train all the way to Quimper.

…Quimper…? I’d never even heard of this place….

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Text © 2003 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted