Mary Richardson / Special to American Press

“So what exactly is a ‘bastide?’” I asked my husband, Joe.

I was willing to discuss the matter at length, because apparently we were about to hike to a bastide named Cordes-sur-Ciel. We had arrived at a little train station in Vindrac, the closest stop to Cordes-sur-Ciel. Cordes itself looked to be about five miles away and up an extremely steep road.

He deftly slipped out the guide book. “A bastide is a village built in France during the medieval period for defense and trade. They were enclosed by high, stone walls for protection,” he read.

“Did you know that ‘Cordessur-Ciel’ can be translated as ‘Cordes in the sky?’ ” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Why yes,” I said to the eyebrow, “I do indeed think we should take a taxi.”

We were in the middle of bastide country, meaning we were in the Midi- Pyrénées in southwestern France, about to begin a 10-day hiking trip. We were prepared to lace up our hiking boots and hit the trails — but one last taxi ride seemed like a very good idea.

Not that we were going to be roughing it; our trip had been arranged by Sherpa Expeditions in London. So, yes, we would be hiking, but we only had to carry a light backpack. Sherpa would transport our luggage from place to place, and they would also book interesting, historical, yet very comfortable, places for us to stay. At the end of each day we would be dirty and tired and hungry — but happy in the knowledge that a warm bath and dinner awaited.

Our hikes took us up to the heights of the fortified hillside bastides. We would walk through the stone gates of the walls and into villages with narrow streets and medieval architecture. We walked to villages we had never heard of and couldn’t pronounce — Cordes, Vaour, Roussayrolles, Bruniquel, Penne, Puycelci, Castelnau-de-Montmiral, and places in between.

Bastides are orderly places, we learned. They were built by the philosophical forerunners of today’s realtor/developers. The most prominent of these medieval developers was Raymond VIII of Toulouse who was licking his wounds after his lands were destroyed in the Albigensian (or Cathar) Crusade.

He authorized hundreds of bastides to be built, and he established ground rules: they would be built with a central square that would serve as a market; the church would be off on a side street; the streets would form a grid. Residents would get, 1) a lot for a house –and the facades (fronts) of their houses better line up, 2) a garden plot, and 3) a cultivable plot outside the walls. The developer would tax them, and in return, residents were protected from marauders.

But the most spectacular characteristic of each bastide was the surrounding walls. They looked impregnable, yet lovely. Sometimes there were stone crosses built into the walls, offering blessings on the valleys below. When the afternoon sun touched the stones, the walls turned into golden brown works of sculpture.

But why did the people need such high walls?

The awnswer is that this bucolic portion of French landscape has a horrific past. Massacres, being burned alive, beheadings — all these things were common aspects of warfare in the area.

This part of France was ground zero for the Albigensian (Cathar) Crusade, which was ordered by Pope Innocent III in 1208 to destroy the Cathars. The Catholic Church called the Cathar religion “The Great Heresy.” The Pope promised his crusaders the remission of sins, a guaranteed place in heaven, and maybe an estate or two in France. He easily raised his army. “And why not?” asks Dr. Hanno Bulhof, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at McNeese State University, “Why fight in foreign lands, when you can find heretics to kill nearby?”

The crusade lasted two generations. Then came the 100 Years War. While the English and the French tried to kill each other, the residents in the bastides paid extra taxes to fortify their walls. When the Religious Wars came, which pitted Protestants (Huguenots) against Catholics, good walls proved good investments.

The night before we began our 10 days of hiking we stayed in the first of the bastides, Cordes-sur-Ciel. The Count of Toulouse had it built in 1222 to protect the scattered populace who were still alive after the crusade, and especially for the people who had lived in the village of Saint-Marcel before the crusaders burned it to the ground in 1215. Cordes was finished in 1229. It was pillaged during the Hundred Year’s War, but rebuilt so well that it escaped damage during the religious wars. Therefore Cordes is full of excewllent examples of 13th and 14thcentury Gothic architecture. We dined in one of those buildings. A monastery built in the 13th century had been transformed into a restaurant named Hostellerie du Vieux Cordes. Our table was in a courtyard under a 300-year-old fig tree. And there we found out what the term “French Country Cuisine” meant as we ate our first duck confit and fois gras and tasted the first of the local wines.

The next morning we began hiking and we walked up to 15 miles a day. Many of the trails were old: they could have been used by medieval monks, soldiers, pilgrims, robbers, or farmers. For long stretches we were on the GR (Grand Randonnee), the pilgrimage trail that would finally end at Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Sometimes the trails were steep, rocky and slippery. But other times the walking was easier and we could stop watching our feet and notice how peaceful, green, and incredibly beautiful it all was. Unfortunately, our hikes always ended with a climb. The bastides were invariable located on high hills or cliffs.

Each day brought something special. One day we turned a corner while walking on the top of a ridge and saw the ruins of a fortress across the valley. It went straight up from a cliff and into the clouds. It was Penne, and it looked like it was floating on air.

If it seemed impossible that human hands could have built that fortress, it was all too believable that human hands could destroy it. Penne had been a stronghold retreat for the Cathars. It survived the crusade, but fell in the Wars of Religion in 1586. It was abandoned for centuries. Today the fortress is in private hands. We noted the “danger” signs and the scaffolding, and decided to walk on, knowing we had miles to go before we could sleep.

We spent two days in the bastide of Puycelci. and it gave us a big surprise. We were happily exploring the half-timbered houses, walking along the double set of fortified walls, and watching the afternoon sun light up the forests and fields that spread out below us. We had the whole village to ourselves — only 97 people live in Puycelci year round.

All of a sudden we were surprised by a tour bus squeezing through the streets, with a line of cars following. In minutes, the town was full of people and they were converging on an exquisite little church we had just admired (by ourselves). Pretty soon we heard singing. It turned out they were all amateur singers and had come from all over France to perform a concert in the church the next night. We would be there for it!

So the usually empty church was filled clear to the back pews. We crowded together and listened to Handel, Bach, Haydn and Brahms under the blue and golden vaulted ceiling of the Église Saint Corneille. I’m sure the angels joined us in clapping, especially the medieval ones. The next day we walked to Castelnau de Montmiral, which translates as “the new castle on the hill with views.” Long ago, it had been very important because of its location on a rocky cliff that overlooked the Vere River valley. Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, built the castle so he could monitor traffic both upstream and downstream. It was truly impregnable, and withstood the Crusade, the War of Religion and the 100 Years War. But, on this day in 2015, it was empty. The village square was bastide perfection, with half-timbered buildings rising above a vaulted arcade, but it was marred by a bright red condom dispenser. Joe suspected it didn’t get a lot of use; we were the only people there. We continued walking, as, once again, we had miles to go before we slept.

In contrast to the village, the countryside was downright busy. A farmhouse might be historically important, but everyday life still had to go on. Laundry hung from 14th century windows. Cows and sheep grazed in the pastures. Farmers bailed hay, and farmhouse gardens were full of vegetables ready for pickling and canning. Vineyards were at their peak. Luscious looking grapes were being cut from vines so winemakers could start the fermentation process.

That day we walked right into a vineyard, and stayed the night. Our lodging was at the Chateau de Mayragues. Not only were we going to sleep in a real 12th century castle — the chateau is one of the only surviving examples of its type of regional fortified architecture — but we were also staying in a working vineyard in the heart of the Gaillac wine appellation. We had been drinking the local wines during the entire trip, and now we were going to see how and where they were made.

Alan Geddes and his wife bought Mayragues in 1980 when it was, in his words, “in a total state of ruin.” Using local craftsmen, they renovated it and in 1998 the castle was listed as an historical monument.

At the same time Alan was renovating the chateau, he was also learning to make wine. Wine, he said, had been made on the property since 1609, and he didn’t want the tradition to stop with him. In 1999, his was the first vineyard in the Gaillac appellation to adapt biodynamic principals. He was already an organic farmer, but the change meant he had to follow even stricter farming techniques, some with a spiritual component.

“Would you like a tasting before dinner,” he asked. Yes, we would. So we learned about the local grapes that Alan grows — our favorites were the red Braucol and the white Len de L’El — and carefully chose two bottles to bring home.

The next day we walked back to Cordes, and this time we climbed the hill. That night our hosts at La Maison Bakea cooked a traditional French country meal, and we shared duck confit, buttery fois gras, fresh goat cheeses and Gaillac wines with four other hikers. There was much laughter as everyone recounted stories about hiking the trails, but I felt a little melancholy. It was over. That night I would pack our hiking boots.

Except, it wasn’t quite over. We stayed a day and night in Albi, where we tried to absorb the beauty of an “Episcopal City,” now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Then there was a long taxi ride to Toulouse, a plane ride to Paris and another to Houston, and finally a traffic jam on the I-10.

When we got home I unpacked our two bottles of Gaillac wine and just looked at them. During the week, I called Arthur Durham at La Truffe Sauvage and asked him to teach me how to make duck confit, which he did. I served the duck confit with our Gaillac wines. And then I finished unpacking and, finally, I put away our hiking boots.

Our hike through medieval France was truly over. And I was sad.

 

*This story first appeared in the American Press on December 6, 2015. 

The bastide of Puycelci built multiple walls to defend its citizens. Here you can see two sets of walls and a cross built to declare their faith. (Mary Richardson/Special to the American Press)

Bruniquel was built on a cliff for defense. According to legend, it was established in the 6th century by Queen Brunehaut, and it is dominated by the two castles shown above, a “new” one built in the 16th century and the other built in the 13th century on the ruins of Queen Brunehaut’s fortress. (Mary Richardson/Special to the American Press)

The blue vaulted church of Église Saint Corneille in Puycelci is often empty, but it was packed for an amateur concert of Handel, Bach, Haydn and Brahms. (Mary Richardson/Special to the American Press)