As we were on holiday in Béziers and were touring around the Lanquedoc area in southern France, we paid a quick visit to Quillan.

This is in the area where the Cathars (or Albigensians) were wiped out by the Inquisition in the 13th and early 14th centuries.

I'd decided by now, after producing the first three drafts of the novel, that Marguerite would retreat to the Forêt de Mormal, south of Valenciennes to have her extraordinary experience of the 'Far-Near One' - the unique name she invented for God.

As we were holidaying in northern France this year, I persuaded Ian to spend a few nights in the forest before we moved to Normandy and Brittany. 

A beautifully peaceful glade in Mormal .

It was on a walk along the forest tracks that I startled a grazing deer...

      Our home for three nights, beside a pool...

We journeyed towards Roscoff where we would take the ferry back to Plymouth—we had tickets for the Pavilions the evening we got back to Blighty.

On the way we stopped off for a night in Rouen where Joan of Arc met her end in the same brutal way as Marguerite. Their construction as 'heretics' may have differed in expression, but both reflected the Church's stance on female autonomy and sought to shut down their 'voice'. (See Travelogue 16th March 2013 for another possible connection).

We paid a visit to Mont-Saint-Michel which we'd only seen from a distance last time we were here (on that cursèd holiday with the old campervan in 1989). As it has connections with St Michael's Mount in the county we have adopted (or which has adopted us)—and there are several allusions to Saint Michael in the novel—we did the full tour.

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Our tickets for the Pavilions were to see Bill Bailey...and then home to bed.

Click here for the 2016 instalment