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Low/Intermediate Level Hillwalks in the Corbieres hills and the Montagne Noir

 

painting holiday - mosaic course

Wine Walks 

If you're interested in wine, Le Cerf Gris is a great place to start your wine tour.  It's more than thirty years since wine was made by the house, but the stables and barns and cellar give you an idea of how each wine maker's house was almost a village in microcosm, with forge, sawmill and stables. The eight barrels in the cellar, made in situ, are over six feet in diameter.

In the village itself you can taste Corbieres AOC wine from four very different producers, one of which is now fully organic (exporting to New York and Los Angeles). Our favourite 'petits vignerons' make wine the old fashioned way: picking by hand (in an age where machine-stripping is becoming the norm), cooking and eating with the vendangeurs, adding very little sulphur preservative, not flash-pasteurizing and not oaking.  But on the other hand, the doctor's wine - Chateau de Lanes - which does undergo all these treatments, has been a regular on the shelves of Marks & Spencers for a number of years. 

 

house & garden

languedoc

mosaic

 

 

 

 

The church and the house

 

 

A short walk along the disused Caulnes marble branch-line takes us into the Minervois wine region: considered by some to be finer, lighter and more subtle. 

We enjoy the drive across the fertile plain to the mediaeval village of Minerve, balanced high above the junction of two rivers.

The house & the church in late afternoon light. The tower in the foreground is an abandoned pigeonniere.

Minerve

cave entrance.jpg (65168 bytes)

 

 

This was a Cathar stronghold, and the catapault emplacement used by Simon de Montfort's troops to subdue its inhabitants can be visited, and the river-cave system explored - easily accessible to the general public.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

wildflowers are abundant in springtime

Mont d'Alaric is just outside our village - at 600 m. it's the highest of the corbieres hills

 

 

 

 

 

minervois wine region

 

vineyards

 

low-level walks in the vineyards of the Minervois

Low/Intermediate Level Hillwalks - an opportunity to range a bit further among the Corbieres, with 5 hour walks that take in the summit of Mont Alaric (600 m.) interspersed with lower-level walks exploring the gorges of Thermes, Minerve and the Canal du Midi.

 

ripe bunches - early october
vines and poppies in may

 

Peyrepertuse - a cathar castle in the Corbieres Hills

Vineyards in the autumn form a patchwork of colour

 

walking holiday - cookery course - art - yoga at le cerf gris

A walking holiday  in the Languedoc region of south west France is best in the spring and autumn, to avoid the high temperatures of summer, to see the best of the wildflowers - and to escape the tourists at world heritage sites like the Canal du Midi, and  mediaeval Carcassonne.

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le cerf gris