LeClozet

Larressingle one of the most beautiful villages of France is towards the northern edge of the Gers department, 5 kilometres west of Condom

It is on one of the major pilgrimage paths to Santiago de Compostella, a path that also passes through nearby Condom and Montreal-du-Gers.

It is a small village, almost completely surrounded by heavy fortified walls dating from the 13th century.

Almost 300 metres around, the village is entered by its only gate, across a pretty little bridge. Within the walls are a small church, Roman style and basic in implementation, a small chateau and various smaller buildings and houses, mostly set with their backs to the fortified walls.

Although small, Larressingle is a ‘must see’ village if you are in the region. It really is an interesting and lovely little place and very well worth seeing.

At the bottom edge of Larressingle there is an ‘exhibition’ of medieval weaponry - essentially they have recreated a medieval siege camp at the walls of the fortified town. Entertaining for the children especially (and me) to see the large stone throwers, battering rams etc that would have been used to attack such a village.

The person who runs the camp is a larger than life character and kept us all amused throughout. He has boxes of clothes and armour for the children to wear and created a story around the children which included operating the machines. The children shot arrows, launched siege catapult and at one point he fired a replica of a medieval gun, very noisy.

A family of 2 adults and 2 children costs about €20, which is great value for money.

For further information visit their site at http://larressingle.free.fr/

Tags: Larressingle, Pilgrim Route

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 2:32 am and is filed under Days Out. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.