Our Blog - The Pyrénées, Roquefort-les-Cascades

After enjoying another nice breakfast, we headed back home. We took the more scenic route, heading South-West further into the Pyrénées. The road was quite twisty but the views were lovely. Here, you can see a village at the base of a mountain with a little patch of snow still up there. There is also a lake below the village. This area had quite a few ski stations, and you can see one of the ski pistes in the 3rd picture on the right-side of the mountain.

This is Chateau d'Usson, one of many former Cathar castles which dot the countryside in the Southern part of France. Most, like this one, are just ruins of what used to be grand palaces. The castle dates from the 11th century (perhaps earlier) and during the Cathar period marked the eastern boundary of the territories of the Counts of Foix. The Cathar bishop of Toulouse Guilhabert de Castres is known to have taken refuge here. Towards the end of the wars against the Cathars, this was one of their last sanctuaries. An interesting piece of trivia: during World War II, a British Dakota transport aircraft crashed onto a nearby mountain in 1944 and supposedly there are some part of the wreckage on display. However, the castle was closed, so we could only take a couple pictures from the parking area down below it.

We made our way to our only stop on the way home, this at a waterfall near the village (really more like a hamlet) of Roquefort-les-Cascades. While it was a Saturday, I was a little surprised when I drove up to the parking area and it was, well, almost full! We headed up the path and there were lots of people picnic-ing on the various picnic tables that were well-placed in basically every flat area. We walked up several different levels and took a few pictures, and let Lucy explore the paths and a couple of little caves.