St. Guilhem le Desert & Abbaye de Fontcaude

Today was the last day that we thought we'd travel further afield from St. Chinian. Tomorrow is a guaranteed immediate environs day as we prepare to tear ourselves away from this idyllic location. So, we chose yet another Plus Beaux Village as our destination - St. Guilhem le Desert in the Herault River gorge. It won out over a return to Collioure - imagine! It ended up being closer then Collioure as well and by the time we hit the Herault Gorge, we knew we'd made the right choice.

By now we've driven more than one death defying gorge, but this one was pretty tame with enough road space to meet a tour bus, which is generally never a good thing.

As we walked up into town, we were first greeted by a fine view of St. Guilhem's abbey. This was another UNESCO site because of its history as a stop on the pilgrimage route from Arles to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In ancient times this prilgrimage must have taken months. What were they thinking?

Anyway, as in most Plus Beaux Villages, this was a tourist hot spot and on this hot sunny day there was no better place to cool off than under the shade of their 155 year old plane tree in the main square. Needless to say, this is also the location of all the cafes, so this was our lunch destination for today. We both had a salad of warm duck slices with gizzards. Fabulous! I know most of you are going, YUCK, but we REALLY like this stuff!

I wonder what it's actually like to live in one of these towns. I mean, for most of the pleasant weather they'll be crawling with tourists and for the rest of the time they are very remote, with minimal services and no way to get a car to most houses. Different strokes, I guess.

On the way back to St. Chinian, we decided to visit the closest historic site to St. Chinian - nothing like leaving it until the end of our visit. This site is the Abbaye de Fontcaude, which, guess what, was also on the pilgrimage route. Fontcaude has been burned and torn down and rebuilt so many times that you lose track. It's restoration to today's standard was only in 1969.


The monks definitely chose the most amazing locations for their abbeys - generally totally secluded - and this one was no exception. The pilgrims would probably be really grateful when they found these abbeys, if they could find them. I mean, they didn't have Emily, my GPS, to help them and even with her we barely found the place.


When we got back to Aurelie, we were reluctant to open up our nice cool house, but it was too lovely on the terrace, so open up we did and spent another long evening enjoying the blue sky and the heat.