Carcassonne; Thursday, 15 September, 2022

As the flight had been quite regularly late, even when I was booking many months earlier, I’d made sure to book a train from Toulouse for the early afternoon rather than the morning so that I could get a decent nights sleep, not that I needed to worry in the end. From the airport I hopped on the AeroBus into town and over to the main station.

I had about 30 minutes to spare before my train was due to depart, but in the end it arrived a little early so only had to hang around for 20 minutes before I was able to get seated on board. A smooth journey down through the Occitan countryside and we arrived on time into Carcassonne. From the station it was about a 15-minute walk across town to my hotel where I checked in and dropped my stuff off in my room.

Having carefully applied a coating of sunscreen I headed out into town to go for a bit of an explore, starting off by visiting the Cathedral that was only a short walk away from the hotel and then having a wander around the area near there. Whilst the fortified upper town is one of the most famous fortifications in the country, the lower town was also fortified and small fragments of the old bastion walls still remain, mostly at three of the four corners where the fortifications once were.

From the lower town I braced myself for the slog up the hill to the upper town and made my way across the Pont Vieux and up the surprisingly shallow approach road that wraps itself around the fortress leading you to the gateway at the rear of La Cité as it’s known locally.

I headed into the fortified old town and had a long wander around the streets and lanes of La Cité before making my way over to the Château Comtal, the large castle at the heart of La Cité. I managed to arrive with about 10 minutes to spare before they stopped letting people in for the evening, but it also meant that it was quiet as there were only a handful of other people looking round at the same time as me.

After exploring the castle the route of the tour takes you out onto the ramparts where you walk along about 500m of the near 2KM walls of the city, from here you can take in the views down onto the lower city as well as across the towers and walls of La Cité itself.

The rampart walk ends close to the Basilica of Saint Nazaire which used to be the city’s cathedral until that was conferred onto the one in the lower town, despite that it’s still an impressive church with a long history and was worth a few minutes exploring.

After a little more wandering around La Cité I headed out through the Porte de l’Aude which isn’t one of the two main gate of the city, but does provide the most direct (if steepest and uneven) route back down to the river of the same name.

I headed back to the hotel to freshen up, and after all the hiking up, round and back down from the city, a well-deserved shower before heading out in search of some dinner in the lower town, before returning to the hotel for a well-earned sleep.