Romancing Carcassonne

"We rounded a corner and there, on a rise beyond the river, was a vision for which no photograph could have prepared us. We pulled over to the curb and got out of the car to stand and stare."

By Wade Rowland

      I got hooked on travel early in life. And for many years, beginning long before my first passport, it seemed to me that one of the transcendent travel experiences must be to walk the grey stone ramparts of Carcassonne, preferably at night and preferably in the autumn. This notion was firmly lodged in my brain when, as a diffident fourteen-year-old, I discovered the books of one of the most popular travel writers of any era, Richard Halliburton.

In his heyday in the 'twenties and 'thirties, Halliburton was a household name in America and one of the most widely-read authors of his time. He had discovered early on that what his audience wanted from him was not culture, not politics and geography but adventure and, above all, the romance of travel. And that is what he gave them. He travelled on a shoestring to the most exotic corners of the globe and when adventure did not present itself, he created it.

Carcasonne - Continued >>