Ascending the narrow path to Peyrepertuse

We’ve pulled some rookie moves as parents, with the kids. For starters, this is not what you would call a kid-friendly destination. The other day, we drove to the nearest supermarket and it took half an hour to get there. The village has a post office, church, and an old library – and that’s it. There’s a restaurant, but we were advised against it, as it’s over-priced. So we’ve been taking advantage of the Cathar sight-seeing here, and traveled to Peyrepertuse on Tuesday to see the ruins of this old castle, set up high in the side of a limestone rock massif.

I liked the castle better from afar – but like my mom said, most things are like that (better from afar). The route took us on very narrow roads with no guardrails. So you can imagine what it was like for the passengers, with me behind the wheel.

Once at the castle, we bought ourselves audioguides in English, which we wore around our necks. The audioguides looked like old remote controls from the 80s, and we held them to our ear to hear the narration of what we were seeing, once inside the castle. It was a steep hike up limestone steps, in and out of the tree-line, to the castle. Really nothing about it made sense for the kids. Charlotte had a full-on meltdown once inside the main courtyard of the castle, and all the other tourists had to stop listening to the narration to regard Charlotte, kicking and screaming in the backpack. She just needed to eat.

We fed the girls banana and crackers, and left, agreeing we had gotten castles out of our system for the time being.

Categories: Travelogues

Tags: France, Memoir, travel