Posts related to the military order of the Knights Templar featured in Channel of the Grail.
My second major novel, Channel of the Grail: A Novel of Cathars, Templars, and a Nazi Grail Hunter (formerly titled The Perfect) was released on May 3, 2016, and is now available for purchase either in print or eBook through Amazon.com
Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:11 AM Gare d’Avignon TGV
“Sitting in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination….” The old Simon and Garfunkel song. And a reminder how radically things can change. My destination this AM is Paris CDG [Charles de Gaulle airport] and then a flight 10 days early back to NY. On Friday evening the word finally came: Mom had made her transition.
After spending the night in the Mediterranean city of Perpignan, I returned inland, arcing northwest and then east to Bezier back on the coast. As this was my last foray through the heart of Cathar country, I left my previous day’s fatigue behind and headed expectantly into the Corbières, a mountainous region featured in both my novel’s 20th century Grail hunter and the 14th century character, Guilhem Bélibaste, the “last Cathar Perfect.”
My week in the Foix area featuring visits to Tarascon, Ussat, Miglos, Montreal de Sos, Foix, St. Bertrand-des-Comminges, Lourdes, Prehistoric Art Park, and the Caves of the Lombrives.
There was the sense that “the scenery was setting the stage literally…a dramatic change going south, from rolling hills to steep stuff, almost like driving west from Boulder [in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies]. I can see how these land configurations served as natural boundaries, why this area was a defensive position worth fortifying against invasion from across the Pyrenees.” I became quickly aware that I was approaching a region of multiple mysteries.
