Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

France ! ô belle contrée, ô terre généreuse
Que les dieux complaisants formaient pour être heureuse,
Tu ne sens point du Nord les glaçantes horreurs ;
Le Midi de ses feux t’épargne les fureurs

À la France – André Chénier

I arrived in Port-la-Nouvelle late yesterday afternoon having taken a train from Montauban. Port-la-Nouvelle is a busy seaport on the Mediterranean that is trying to reinvent itself as a centre for offshore renewable energy. It’s blessed with long sandy beaches and a series of lagoons. It was next to one of these that I spent my first night “on the road” at the charming Refuge Littoral Sainte Lucie. For the next week I’ve decided to dispense with my tent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag and enjoy the luxury of a soft bed and an evening meal. I’m basically going soft in my old age!

I’ll wager that very few walkers embarking on the Cathar way decide to spend their first night at tbe gorgeous Refuge Littoral of Sainte Lucie. There is a very good reason for this. Although the accommodation is listed in the topoguide for the GR367, the Refuge lies 6.5km outside Port-la-Nouvelle in the middle of a nature reserve and on the banks of the canal de la Robine. So by staying there, you add 13km to the 240km Cathar way. That isn’t going to be everybody’s cup of tea!

It suited me well enough. I spent an enjoyable 90 minutes schlepping from tbe train station at Port-la-Nouvelle to the refuge, arriving in good time for the 7.30pm meal I had pre-booked.

To say that the Refuge was isolated would be an understatement. It used to be a community for monks (from the 9th century until just after the French revolution) when it passed into private hands before being converted into a coastal eco retreat in 2022 (one of only 4 in France!). Run by an engaging couple, Véronique and Marc Bernal, the monastic community has been converted into a comfortable refuge from the stresses of modern life.

The reserve is situated in the middle of the Sainte-Lucie nature reserve which is home to over 700 different species of birds and 200 plant species.

The Refuge Littorel de Sainte Lucie lies on the side of the Canal de la Robine which was originally built by the Romans! If you end up getting lost and find yourself on the wrong side of the canal, there is a nifty looking hand ferry which can transport you to the Refuge if you choose not to swim!

Supper was a jolly affair. There were six of us: three friends (Francoise, Loïc and Jean-Louis) from near Toulouse who were on an electric biking tour ( you hire these from the Refuge) and a young Swiss couple (one of whom sported a luxuriant beard that reminded me of Forrest Gump!) from Bern who had just completed a 10 month biking trip around South America and survived to tell the tale.

When I divulged the fact that I was English to one of the Toulousan ebikers, his face lit up and he exclaimed ( in perfect English) “I love to practice my English but I haven’t had much opportunity since I learnt the language from a record 50 years ago. I remember the following sentence I learnt: my name is Charles Wheeler. I am 34 yesrs old with light brown hair and grey eyes. With my bowler hat and my umbrella, each day I take the 7.34 train to London where I work in the City”.

Supper was delicious (cucumber salad, beef bourguignon and fruit crumble). Interestingly the French word for crumble is crumble!

I wandered around the courtyard garden before breakfast. Véronique was busy watering the plants and weeding, which she admitted, through gritted teeth, was a daily necessity. I admired her assiduity and noticed that many of the drought tolerant plants (sages/alliums/cistus) in the courtyard were similar to several of ours back home.

Breakfast wasn’t the most appetising that I’ve ever experienced: a few rounds of toasted baguette which were a danger to dodgy dentures! Munching my way through a couple of these unappetising rusks I tried to explain that I wrote a daily blog about my walks in France. There was much hilarity when Francoise mispronounced the blog name as ‘Penguin’s Progress’! In a weird way, it seemed curiously apt.

The first stage of the Cathar Way from Port-la-Nouvelle to Durban-Corbières (29 km) crosses an arid region bounded to the west by the valley of the Aude, to the sout by the valley of the Agly and to the east by lagoons and the Mediterranean. The eastern Mediterranean Corbières is characterised by its rocky limestone landscape, ideal for growing grapes. The next time you come across a bottle of Corbières in your local supermarket, the map below will give you an idea of where it comes from in south west France and where it sits in relation to Carcassonne and Béziers, epicentres of the Cathar Crusades.

The region is also extremely windy – there are 260 days of wind each year of which the two dominant ones in the area are the Tramontane (dry and cold) and the Marin (heavy and humid). In the 19th century there were over 900 mills in the Aude region but most of them were water mills which outnumbered windmills by 3:1. Wheat,olives and sheep were the mainstay of the local economy. But then the weather changed. The summers became drier and hotter while the winters became much colder and as a result vines were introduced to the region in the 19th century. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the wind! Perhaps not surprisingly they are planning to construct a huge 20MW wind farm off the coast at Port-la-Nouvelle and the first of the 190m high wind turbines was towed into position a few weeks ago! They used to make hay when the sun shone, now they make electricity when the wind blows. Times change.

It is fair to say that I didn’t start the day with particularly high expectations of what lay ahead. One blog I read summed up the day succintly: “Une étape qui je pense ne restera pas dans ma mémoire : constituée à 90% de pistes exposées au vent sans points d’intérêts remarquables si ce n’est quelques points de vue à partir des deux ou trois points hauts du parcours“. That roughly translates into “a stage that will not last long in my memory comprising 90% hillsides exposed to the wind without any real points of interest apart from two or three half decent view points on elevated sections of the route!. It wasn’t exactly a sales pitch from the Aude tourism department!

As I set off from Port-la-Nouvelle, two things quickly became apparent. It was going to be windy and it was going to be dry! With just 170 mm of rain a year, the Aude’s arid climate is akin to the edges of the Sahara.

The increasingly harsh environment poses a risk not just to the survival of vines but also to the human population. The scarcity of water in the region reached such extreme levels that in September 2024 many of the rivers in the Corbières region dried up and water had to be shipped in by container to the inhabitants of Corbières-Durban. The impact of climate change seems a lot more real in this region of south west France than isolated atolls in the South Pacific.

After retracing my steps of the previous afternoon and reaching Port-la-Nouvelle, I headed off into the garrigue. For the next few hours, much as anticipated, the landscape was pretty featureless apart from tbe towering hulks of the wind turbines which dominated the horizon.

At Roquefort- Corbières the grated carrot and tinned mackerel in mustard lunch option was conspicuous by its absence. Instead I decided to chance my arm in the village bistro where I plumped for a healthy sounding Caesar salad. When this arrived I discovered the bistro gad added their twist to an Italian classic – chicken nuggets on a bed of cos lettuce swimming in a sea of salad cream. Ah well, it tasted good even it won’t work wonders for my waistline!

The afternoon walk to Durban-Corbières proved a lot more tricky than the morning’s gentle amble. There were a number of arduous ascents and descents which made me thankful that I wssn’t having to lug my camping gear with me.

Mid afternoon I passed a series of roman mileposts (actually measurements of a thoudand paces) that had been set up on the Via Domitia nearly 2,000 years ago during the reign of the Emperor Augustus.

On the final stretch into Durban-Corbières I passed four other hikers heading in the same direction – the only hikers I passed all day!

I finally reached my destination for the night, the gite Occitanie, shortly after 5pm. Despite the constant wind it had been a hot old day and I could have murdered hslf a pint of shandy! 34 kilometres covered during the day. It was the sort of progress any penguin would have been proud of!