The making of 'Het land der katharen, een historische reisgids'

If anyone had told me six years ago that I was going to write a book on the cathars, I probably would have asked : who are the cathars, and why would I want to write a book about them, or any book for that matter ?

The Medieval City of Carcassonne (picture by Ankie Nolen)

The first time I passed through Le Pays Cathare was going home from my personal 'Tour de France' that started in Calais, following the Atlantic Coast into Spain, then through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean. I didn't quite make the coast, but wanted to return home in as straight a line north as possible. Thus passing through the Ariège and the Corbières I was overwhelmed by the landscape and intrigued by the ominous ruins up on the ragged mountaintops. I decided to spend my next holiday there and started gathering information on the region, trying to find out who built those castles, why and when, what had happened to turn them into ruins. It was not easy: six years ago information on the cathars in Dutch was limited to one book and the internet was not nearly as developed as it is now. However, I discovered one website that provided me with enough information to get really fascinated : cathares.org ® !

On that first visit I stayed in Carcassonne, getting to know the surrounding countryside until it was so familiar that it felt like home. The bookshop in the Cité of Carcassonne was a treasury: I visited it so often that I was soon welcomed as a friend, always leaving with a heavy load of books, now taking up about 2 metres of my bookcase… The small terrace opposite the Château comtal was my favourite place to sit and read at night, watching it and imagining Raymond Roger Trencavel coming home to his wife Agnès de Montpellier and young son Raymond, or - horrific thought - wasting away and dying in one of his own dungeons. Walking back to the hotel through the 'lices' (the space between the two walls surrounding Carcassonne) around midnight, with all the tourists gone, helped me to envisage it as at the time of the Albigeois crusade.

The castle of Peyrepertuse (picture by Ankie Nolen)