Anthony Peregrine

You’re on the run, the cheque bounced, there are incriminating pictures on the internet and the dog died in mysterious circumstances. Don’t despair. I have a plan. You take an aeroplane to Perpignan, you drive into the Corbières mountains – and you disappear.
Nobody will ever think of looking here. Rising northeast of the Pyrenees, these are France’s forgotten mountains. They are wild, rugged and secretive. It’s not that they don’t want to see you, more that tourism hasn’t really occurred to them yet.

	The Corbières mountains

Naturally, there is farming, not to mention good wine, cheese and honey. But the real business of the Corbières is to be remote and grandly empty. It is a region for people to hole up in. The Cathar heretics did so when being wiped out in the 13th century. Their castles still perch on vertiginous peaks – clearly built by eagles trained in stonemasonry.

The Cathar heritage remains omnipresent, and has given rise to some pretty nutty Dan Brown-style ideas. Then again, in these isolated zones, nutty ideas don’t always seem that nutty. Sitting alone in a bar in Arques, I could have sworn I saw Lord Lucan trotting past on Shergar.

There are, though, real-world surprises, too: a village restaurant with Afghan specialities, exceptional chambres d’hôtes and grandiose country that nobody else knows about. Even if you’re not on the lam, this is a splendid spot for late summer or, indeed, autumn. We kick off from Perpignan airport.

DAY ONE
Before leaving the known world, nip north along the flat Roussillon coast. Here, scrubland, sea and big lagoons get terribly confused. By now, the summer throngs will have thinned, leaving a rather attractive air of abandon.

At Sigean, you might like to pop into the vast African Reserve (00 33-4 68 48 20 20, www.reserveafricainesigean.fr). The price is steep – £15.50 for adults, £12 for children – but you could spend several happy hours there, walking past Vietnamese potbellied pigs (which, I have to warn you, are alarmingly sexually precocious).

A hop further on, take the tiny road out to Peyriac-de-Mer, then Bages, two sinuous old lagoonside villages still quietly stuck in a time when you could make money from eel-fishing.

Now skirt Narbonne and bounce inland, following signs to Fontfroide Abbey (04 68 45 11 08, www.fontfroide.com; £6.40): further evidence that, in pursuit of austerity, the Cistercians knew how to grab the loveliest slices of landscape. The site is imposing – and gets you out of visiting any other abbeys from now on.

DAY TWO
First stop, Les Clauses, a hamlet beyond Montséret, where the Miellerie des Clauses (04 68 43 30 17, www.miellerie-des-clauses.com) sells some of the finest honey I’ve ever tasted. Try the miel des garrigues.
Now you filter into the foothills, along to the medieval village of Lagrasse. Ignore the abbey in favour of the market hall and the 14th-century bridge. It is about 100ft above a river roughly 5in deep. Diving is not recommended.

Lunch at Hostellerie des Corbières (04 68 43 15 22; from £11), then it’s up and over to Villerouge-Termenès. We’re getting increasingly remote now – your appearance in the village cafe will startle staff unused to customers. But the castle across the way (£4.30) is a belter, brought alive via audio guide, video images and a good story well told.

This concerns Bélibaste, the last Cathar cleric, who was torched here. We should perhaps pause to remind ourselves that the Cathars were Gnostic heretics. Their strength in this region so irked the Pope and the king of France that they mounted a crusade against them in the 13th century. The resultant slaughter remains a key reference point in local folk memory. This is why you will see “Cathar Country” plastered on just about everything, including cheese. But Bélibaste was a minor figure. By the time of his death, in 1321, Catharism was a spent force. Still, you’ll enjoy meeting him...

DAY THREE
Head back to Couiza, then up to Rennes-le-Château. At first sight, this is a straightforward hill-topping village, with arresting views. But there are secrets here – secrets so big that the place has become European weirdo central.

The facts are simple. In the late 19th century, a new and impoverished priest arrived in Rennes-le-Château. All of a sudden, he became rich. But where had the money come from? Had he found the treasure of the Cathars? The treasure lifted from the Temple at Jerusalem?

Or had he unearthed information with which he could blackmail the Vatican? Perhaps “proof” that Christ, rather than dying on the Cross, had popped to France with Mary Magdalene and founded a French royal dynasty? Since the 1960s, more than 300 books have tackled the mystery of this instant wealth. Dan Brown plundered it with gay abandon. Some people claim that Jesus is buried locally. Others claim pretty much everything else. There is apparently a Teutonic sect that arrives here once a year to watch UFOs filling up with water.

If this excites you, you will love wandering the former presbytery and the church, looking for esoteric clues allegedly left by the priest (much attention focuses on the statue of the devil holding up the holy-water basin). If it does not, you may still have fun – marvelling at how village and church first play up the mystery (to get people in), then play it down again (lest barminess take over completely).

Lunch at the Amarante (04 68 74 28 98, www.restaurant-amarante.eu; from £17) before continuing to Espéraza, an old working town on the River Aude. Here you will be tempted by two museums, one on dinosaurs, the other on hats. Unless you are stupendously interested in either of these subjects, I’d resist. Instead, carry on to Quillan, then straight up the mountain to Col du Portel and along the farming plateau towards Puivert. This is glorious upland country.

DAY FOUR
Back down to Quillan, then along the Aude Valley to the Défilé de Pierre-Lys. With little warning, the soaring, rocky valley walls close in so tight, you can feel the pressure. It’s like motoring through a geological vice.
At Puilaurens, the castle appears to be about halfway to heaven. The effect is more mesmerising still along the road at Quéribus, where the castle grows straight out of a crag half a mile high. You will think it inconceivable that anyone might have put a barbecue up there, never mind an entire castle. But they did.
Most astonishing, and vertiginous, of the lot is Peyrepertuse, perched so high on its impossibly steep mountain that there is a mystic swirl to the old stones. Strictly speaking, these aren’t Cathar castles. Though Quéribus was the heretics’ last redoubt, the castles were later rebuilt to guard what was then the Franco-Spanish frontier. This makes them no less awesome.
Awesome, too, is the access, notably if you have no head for heights. The mountain-edge road to Quéribus is frightening, that to Peyrepertuse terrifying – I drove both with my hands over my eyes. Then there’s a tough little scramble to get right to the top. But, my, the sheer exhilaration. The views are outstanding – but it’s more than that. It’s as if you have become a purer person simply for being up there (though you may still be damned glad to get back down).
Now, finally, out to Tautavel, where what is said to be the oldest European yet found lived in a cave 450,000 years ago. His remains, and those of his companions, were discovered in the early 1970s. The museum (04 68 29 07 76, www.tautavel.com; £5) is surprisingly lively, full of tableaux, models and films of men ripping animals apart with stones. They are all ringers for Ozzy Osbourne – so I’d eat lunch first. There are plenty of bistros and brasseries in a jolly little enclave by the museum.

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