Today we went to Queribus (Q) and Peyrepertuse (P) castles.
Queribus was the smaller castle but also the more important one historically; it was the very last castle where Cathars (Bons hommes) could roam, at all. The first known documentation of Q was in 1020. From 1162 it was the north gate of Aragon! I didn’t know Aragon really existed! In 1255, the French crusaders took the castle in their hunt of the Cathars. I think that Queribus fell because Cathars ran out of water, but I’m not sure about that.
Queribus and Peyrepertuse are both on rocky/cliffy mountaintops.
The drive up to Q was on a small switch back road with amazing views.
It was a short walk to get to the castle from the parking lot. The walk and the castle had great views of the surrounding area. From the castle we could see the Pyrenees (with lots of nice snow on top). The castle sits at 728 meters in altitude.
Queribus Castle was in better condition than Peyrepertuse. We walked up a few stairs onto a viewing platform where we could see for hundreds of miles! Not that you couldn’t see for hundreds of miles from Peyrepertuse too, but you could not climb up stairs inside a building to get to the special viewing because the hole of the upper stories were in ruins.
We found a staircase in Q that led down to a dark passageway that went to a little room down the mountain. From there you could fire arrows and such at enemies that were still out of reach of the castle.
When we went to Peyrepertuse the road was even better than the Q one in terms of very sharp switchback roads. We had been warned by guidebooks that the walk from the parking lot to the castle was very very windy but there was actually no wind at all. Unlike the walk to Q it was sheltered most of the time and the views were short and sweet.
I will put stuff about Peyrepertuse later.
Hopefully.
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