Ceret - Cathar continued.

To continue the tour of bakeries; this one is down a side street in the next block. (Turn left at the Grande Café).

The flag is handy as we can just peek down the street and know that it is open.
The sandwich board announces her 4 croissant for the price of 3 special (offere).
Makes it difficult when we only want 3 and she keeps giving us 4. Happened
2 days in a row and we had to have croissant for lunch today to use them up,
its a rough life.

Apart from the terrible hardship of having to deal with extra croissant the other
difficulty is walking past this display case. I don't think our self control will
last much longer.

After yesterdays strenuous exercise we spent a relaxing day today. I went out in the morning to find a bench in the sun to sit and sketch from.

The start of a sketch of Ceret rooftops. I stopped when the bench became shaded and
will continue on another sunny day.

After lunch Mum and I went looking for a sunny spot to sketch and ended up down at the petanque court. (the French version of bocce). There were about 25 or so guys of various ages playing and watching. Mum and I tried to do quick sketches to get the body positions and, as neither of us usually sketch people, it was a challenge. After a while a couple of the players came over and got a laugh out of recognizable sketches, telling us their names.
To continue with yesterdays events we drove the short distance from Queribus castle to Peyrepertuse, another Cathar Castle. You can actually see one from the other.

From the parking lot it was difficult to determine what was rock and what was castle.

Buoyed by her successful climb up to the last one, Mum decided to have a go at this one too. The trail in was about a kilometre of rough, rocky path that went up and down and around the end of the mountain to the entrance on the other side. Mum made it about 3/4s of the way and decided to just slowly make her way back. It was a good decision because even inside the walking was difficult and there were a lot of slippery stairs.

Looking down at the village below. We were desperate for a coffee later but this village
was one with a parking lot on the outside as the roads are too narrow for cars and we weren't
even sure that there was a café in there, so we passed. Pity.

The castle has two main areas. This shot is from the lower one, looking up at the higher.
In between there are some ruins of buildings snugged into the precipices below.

I can't imagine how the people who lived here managed to move around the complex. They must have been part mountain goat. The staircases were very steep and long. I suspect they also used ladders. In bad weather it must have been very difficult (there were some piles of snow up there when I visited).

From the upper keep looking down at the lower one. This is the largest of the
Cather castles.

There was a sign at the entrance indicating that a million euro will be spent on restoring the site over a period of 10 years. There were areas obviously under restoration with piles of sand, rubble and wheelbarrows.

The upper parts of these walls had been restored.

And now for something completely different;

Posters are now around town advertising Carnaval. The first parade or  1ere cavalcade
sur les boulevards will be on Sunday. The second one will be the following Saturday.

Last time we were here I went into the tourist office and asked what the difference was between the two days. I was told there was "no difference". I then asked why they did it twice and was told "because we can".