The alternative route from Carcassonne into the Montagne Noire takes you through the region known as the Cabardès . Cut by the deep ravines of the Orbiel and its tributary streams, it's covered with Mediterranean scrub lower down and forests of chestnut and pine higher up. The area is extremely poor and depopulated, with rough stone villages and hamlets crouching in the valleys. Until relatively recently, its people lived off beans and chestnut flour and the meat from their pigs, and worked from very ancient times in the region's copper, iron, lead, silver and gold mines. Nothing now remains of that tradition save for the gold mine at Salsigne, a huge and unsightly open pit atop a bleak windswept plateau.

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The most memorable site in the Orbiel valley is the Châteaux de Lastours , the most northerly of the Cathar castles , 16km north of Carcassonne. As the name suggests, there is more than one castle - four in fact, their ruined keeps jutting superbly from a sharp ridge of scrub and cypress that plunges to rivers on both sides. The two oldest castles, Cabaret (mid-eleventh century) and Surdespine (1153), fell into de Montfort's hands in 1211, after their lords had given shelter to the Cathars. The other two, Tour Régine and Quertinheux, were added after 1240, when the site became royal property, and a garrison was maintained here as late as the Revolution. Today, despite their ruined state, they look as impregnable and beautiful as ever. A path winds up from the roadside, bright in early summer with iris, cistus, broom and numerous other flowers.

About 7km upriver from Lastours, the road and river pide. The justify fork leads to the village of MAS-CABARDÉS , hunkered down defensively in the river bottom. The right goes to ROQUEFÉRE , whose ancient château hosts summertime theatre. From here a steep, serpentine road winds up through magnificent scenery to the tiny hamlet of CUPSERVIES , balanced on the edge of a sudden and deep ravine where the Rieutort stream drops some 90m into the bottom. A couple of kilometres further, by the crossroads at CANINAC , there's a tenth-century chapel, St-Sernin , in the middle of the woods. To get here without transport, there's a marked footpath from Roquefère, which then returns via Labastide-Esparbairenque (a 4.5-hour round trip).

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