AuTUMN IN THE PYRENEES: St Ferreol to Toulouse

Saturday's blog, written Friday. If things go according to plan I'll ride in the van tomorrow.  This will enable me to help Gilbert unload the van at the hotel and watch over the luggage as he returns to his home to retrieve our bike cases. One of my reasons for volunteering to do this is that my rear break pads are totally shot.

I'll show a few photos taken the past two weeks which  never made it to the blog.

I'm remiss in riding through what Gilbert calls "Cathar Country" and never discussing the Cathars. Who were they?

The "Cathars" themselves were not a race, or a people; they were the followers of a dissident church that flourished in several parts of Europe during the early Medieval period.

Catharism - meaning literally purity  (as in catharsis) - was a sort of proto- Protestantism that promoted values of equality, neighborliness and charity, and turned its back on the pomp, hierarchy and worldly wealth of the Catholic church of the time. Cathars believed that Earth was ruled by a malevolent God, and that Heaven was the world of the good God: this dualist concept of God was not unique to Catharism, but it was sufficient cause for the Catholic church of the time to brand Catharism as a heresy. 

Catharism did not have a founder, nor a designated leader, and it did not only take root in one place. It appears to have originated in the Byzantine world, and to have spread to Europe via churches in Bulgaria. By the eleventh century, there were Cathar believers all over Europe, including England. But one of the places in which the Cathar church really flourished, and the place with which the word Cathar is now strongly associated, is the southern half of the French regions of Languedoc  and Midi-Pyrénées, e.g. where we've been cycling.


We visited at least two places where the made their last stand.  The Pope formed a crusade and basically slaughtered them.  'Nice was to spread the Gospel.

On a lighter note, there have been multiple discussions on this ride trying to figure out why French french-fries are so much better than ours. One theory, now dis-proven, is that they are cooked in goose fat. No one has the answer but my best french-fries on this trip, and maybe forever, were at the Moroccan restaurant in Foix.

We have observed the French two hour lunch; they seem to eat bread and french-fries and dessert  and drink wine with both  lunch and dinner. But they seem less obese than us.  Something's wrong with this picture.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we take a train from Toulouse to Strasbourg to join Dallas Tandem Club friends for a 10-day ride in Germany.