After leaving Rachel and Sean at the airport THEY decided it was time to DO Carcassonne. We drove to the town centre and followed signs to the Cité . Not knowing that by driving a long way round they could have found a way up the hill, and parking for caravans and motorhomes, THEY left me at the bottom near the river and set off up the hill on foot.

Hmm …. The dodgy leg didn’t like that very much, but it was worth it.

Carcassonne’s Citadel (‘Cité’ is often mistranslated as ‘City’) is a vast site and a magnificent sight (sorry!). It really needs a day to itself to take it all in and walk all the way round outside as well as inside.

Once within the first curtain wall there are narrow streets crammed with souvenir and craft shops as well as cafés and restaurants; then you reach the second curtain wall – I think this bit is called the Barbican – and decide whether to do the paid visit; however, and we don’t know why, we were not charged as we went in in spite of notices appearing to suggest that we would be. And it’s not that we avoided paying – we went to the kiosk and were given tickets.

There’s a lot of it! Information panels at all key points are in French, English and Spanish so a guided tour is not really needed except perhaps for the really serious student.

After a couple of hours or so we made our way back to Harry, but walked on a bit to take pictures from the river bridge.

For more information just Google ‘Carcassonne’ and go wherever you like, but as usual the pictures are well worth a look.