In talking of castles, lentils and lard wagons . . .

So castles made of sand/fall into the sea/ eventually . . . by James Marshall Hendrix, if I'm not mistaken. It's good to remember that our beloved Jimi was also a wonderfully laconic singer and a very poetic lyricist. Many rock fans tend to be dazzled by all the geetar pyro and forget the rest.

It has to be said that my mate Stan and I are not of their number; we've always had a vague plot-ette to do Hendrix: The Poetry one of these days. However I digress (cf Dai Gresser, the well-known tedious Welshman . . .). Actually I've just brought my own appallingly developed talent for digression to its perfectly-honed conclusion: Being Dai Gresser's only slightly smarter brother, I've digressed even before stating any valid point from which one might wilfully perform the act of digression . . .

Or not quite: I did manage to mention the word castle, which is where our story really starts. As you may recall, I live in God's Own Village, Fa, Centre of Known (and Unknown) Universe, en haute vallée de l'Aude, département de l'Aude, somewhere rather vague in southwest France.

Unbelievers (normally Anglytypes from Ongleterry, I must admit), have been known to suggest that France is ten years behind England. There again, the French say that the Aude (a sort of French county thing) is 20 years behind the rest of France, and the decidedly po-faced denizens of Carcassonne reckon l'haute vallée de l'Aude is 30 years behind the rest of the département.

Mind you, we of l'haute vallée consider any true son of Quillan to be positively Neanderthal so évidemment bigger fleas still have smaller micro-irritants to bite them on their minuscule bots . . .

But however deprived we may putatively be in other respects, we positively excel, gleam, exceed, optimise, maximise, or even profusely overflow in the matter of castles. That's to say, we've got a lot of them.

For this you have to blame the Cathars. Who they? you may ask. Basically they're a bunch of C12/13ish back to basics religious guys who took a dim view of the excessively deep Catholic cashtasticness of the period.

Unlike the Lutherans, up in Dutch-land, who had broadly the same point of view and lived to invent the Protestant Work Ethic and even inspire the dear old C of E in the image of William Blake etc; the Cathars were given a good kicking on the orders of His Holiness until they obligingly expired and became extinct. Today we're not even entirely sure what they did believe in, except that it was uncontaminated by used brown ones.

As any fule kno, matters came to a head in a last stand at the most famous of the Cathar castles, Montsegur. The remaining faithful were given the choice of (1) Jump off the notably impressive cliff on which Montsegur stands (2) Be burned at the stake. Apparently they all chose Option 1. Well I suppose you would, wouldn't you?

However these guys and guy-ettes didn't give up without a serious scrap or two, which is why we have a positive connoisseurness of castles to choose from here in the Aude. They all tend to be small, rough and architecturally basique.

But equally they're all perched up on some vicious spike of rock with an awesome view, well up on the ruined underware vertigo rating (see cols previous). It has to be said however that one may select a visit to them as from an extraordinarily rich and detailed wine list.

In choosing an itinerary for a visit by my esteemed son and heir Rhys and my mate Ian, I decided on Peyrepertuse, partly because it's close to the famed Gorges de Galamus and partly because I hadn't been there before either.

It provided the obligatory gnarled and craggy old ruin, steeped in copious sagas of blood, and possessing a suitable very long way down on most aspects. It also had a stunning display of falconry, as you can see in the photo by Ian Harvey of Rocktastic Pix.

Being as it is now les grandes vacances, we fought our way up the road to the summit in the face of a truly fearsome onslaught of lard wagons, as my astute fellow blogger Kate Hardy recently put it. As a term of abuse for camper vans, I thought it was unbeatable so for camper van read lard wagon from now on.

But to sum up, I really ought to justify my own headline and mention the lentils. My mate Ian is a devout veggie so it really was the moment for a quick improv lentil dish. So here we go:

Experimental Lentils

* Chop up a shallot or two, crush a couple of cloves of garlic and fry them in olive oil.

* Add a tin of lentils and don't forget to use all the gunge out of the bottom of the tin; it makes wonderful stock

* Add a veggie stock cube, paprika and black pepper

* For the herbs I wanted to try a bit of fresh tarragon in a purely veggie dish. I thought about fines herbes which ought to contain tarragon, parsley, chives and chervil. I hadn't got any chervil but I chopped in a sprig or two of the other three.

* Add a little water if the mixture seems a bit dry, bring to boil and simmer for five minutes

* Mix in two or three tablespoons of crème fraiche and simmer until it's all back up to temperature

* Add extra salt to taste if you like it that way. I always think that getting the salt right is vital to the success of any dish

* You could bung in a chopped mushroom or two but I can't remember whether I did or not.

Bon appétit!

* You can see more of Ian's pictures by clicking on Rocktastic Pix by Ian Harvey in Other Fun Links