The Cathar Way - A Walker's Guidebook

The Cathar Way is a waymarked trail linking historic castles associated with the ill-fated 13th-century Cathar heresy. Guide to this 250km (two-week) route through the foothills of the Pyrenees in the Languedoc region of southern France, from the Mediterranean to Foix. Beautiful and historic area.

There is a huge amount of literature, in many languages, about Cathars, Cathar castles and walking in the Cathar region. Many English publications on these subjects are available in bookshops in Britain.

Useful relevant websites for purchasing publications include www.amazon.co.uk and www.fnac.com. Try also the addresses and websites referred to in the section in the introduction on maps (those of the IGN, Stanfords, and so on).

Many publications in French – walks guidebooks, general books, tourist guidebooks, special editions of glossy magazines, and so on – can be bought in bookshops (librairies) and newsagents' (maisons de la presse) in and around Cathar castle country. More and more publications in English are also being stocked in such outlets.

The publications listed below amount to only a tiny fraction of the relevant literature. They are mostly those that the author has found useful in preparing this book, and are worth recommending, but it is not suggested that they are necessarily the best of what is available.

There is a guidebook to the Cathar Way in French (le Sentier Cathare), published by Rando éditions. Its photographs and other illustrations of Cathar castles and the surrounding countryside are beautiful, and the sections in the book on the Cathars, the Inquisition, the individual castles and so forth are a mine of fascinating information. At the time of writing, the most recent edition was published in 2005, and seems to be available only in shops in France.

My earlier guidebook – Walking in the Cathar Region (Cicerone, 2005) – contains descriptions of several day-walks of different lengths. The walks have as their focal points Cathar castles or other locations associated with the Cathars. The order in which the walks are presented follows the sequence of events in the 13th century that led to the downfall of the Cathars. Their history is summarised in the book.

The relevant topo-guides for long-distance paths in the region that are published by the FFRP (whose address is in Appendix 6) are listed below. These topo-guides can be bought by credit card via, for example, the IGN and Stanford's websites, but not via the FFRP website.

Sur le Traces des Cathares, le Chemin des Bonshommes (FFRP topo-guide GR107, ref: 1097).
La Traversée des Pyrénées, Pyrénées Orientales (which includes a description of the GR36 south of near Peyrepertuse Castle, ref: 1092).
Traversée du Haut Languedoc (which contains a description of the GR7 north of near Bram, ref: 716).

A good general tourist guide in English to the part of France that includes Cathar castle country is The Green Guide – Languedoc, Roussillon, Tarn Gorges. It is published by Michelin Travel Publications.

Good books about the Cathars in English, aimed at the non-specialist reader and published relatively recently, include The Perfect Heresy by Stephen O'Shea (Profile Books), The Yellow Cross – the story of the last Cathars, 1290–1329 by René Weis (Penguin) and The Cathars – the most successful heresy of the Middle Ages by Sean Martin (Pocket Essentials).

In French, the classic texts include Histoire des Cathares by Michel Roquebert (Perrin) and Montaillou, Village Occitan by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Gallimard). An English translation of the latter by Barbara Bray is entitled simply Montaillou (Penguin Books, 1978, reprinted 1990). Anne Brenon's Petit Précis de Catharisme (Loubatières) is an erudite but clear and succinct portrayal of the Cathars' beliefs, history and social context.

Succinct, too, is The Land of the Cathars by Georges Serrus (Loubatières). Translated from French, this is a richly illustrated glossy publication which describes each of the Cathar castles.