Arcadia Discussion Zone

A page with links to articles and photos relating to mysteries and UFOs over Bugarach -

http://lesarchivesdusavoirperdu.over-bl ... 40307.html

Thanks Nicole.

Thanks. I do recall you posting this before, some time in the past, but well worth reading again in this particular context.



Absolutely agree. Cardou and (perhaps even more likely) Bugarach would both be strong contenders to be the "mysterious mountain" referred to, although there are doubtless other candidates in the general region of Limoux. Hard to bet against it being in the Sals Valley though, in my view.

Ireland sound awesome, btw. Menhir heaven.

Thanks. I've favourited that web page to look at properly later. There looks to be some good stuff in there (albeit in French for this linguistically challenged Anglo!) and great photos.

I think it's hard to think of Cardou, without considering Bugarach as well, given their proximity, and the fact that they dominate either end of that stretch of valley. My fave spot to look at both is the grassy ledge at the top of the eastern flank of Bezu, roughly midway between the two mountains. Happy days.

Of course, even more legends about Bugarach than there are about Cardou .........

I mentioned in a post way back when in ref to Bugarach, i used a 'fly over' service Sheila recommended, but I can't find that ref to it. So I use Google earth which is not as good.

The French link Sheila has gets ya down much lower, with better clarity. I asked why there were military facilities, like a radome above Perillos, an encampment up on Bugarach.

Roger mentioned uranium mining. So is it fair to say, Cardou has a similar geologic composition? The rock faces look like granite, which contain traces of decomposed uranium which releases radon, when it is subsoil.

Has there ever been large scale mining in or around Cardou? Why would Patrice put in so many mentions of nasty weather conditions being swept in from the Cardou direction, into Spain?

Her characters speak of unfavorable events that happen to folk who wander up there. I used Google Earth to scan the top of that hill top and saw no portal, but what most likely is a dormant crater from a long extinct volcano.

If there is a remnant of not cooled off magma in Cardou it certainly could effect winter eather by making the summit cloudy and wind swept. BTW, which location did those picnicking revelers use to make their observations, was the sun in their eyes as it sets?

Nothing like toasted retina to get a sharp look at a mountain top, yes?

BTW, I wonder when Roscoe made his mountaineering comment, he may have meant this as well...I am not as good as I once was, but I am good once like I always was... sorry Roscoe, but I couldn't resist, the devil made me do it.

Hello Jake,

I believe the geology of Cardou is composed of kaolin, also known as China Cley. Link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaolin

There have been mining operations on Cardou in the past, but not, I think, since the 18th century, and that was more of an investigation, I believe. One would have to go back a lot further for serious works of this kind. My memory is hazy on this, although I have read about it in the past. It certainly hasn't been mined for a very long time.

My (paper) map of the area shows an ancient mine entrance about 800m due south of the summit.

There is, of course, the well-known RLC legend about the German miners supposedly hired by Bertrand de Blanchefort in the 12th century, which I won't repeat here, but which would be easily found if you surf a little for it.

Military encampment on Bugarach? That's a new one on me. You sure about that?

This is what you want lads, this is the French yellow pages with the aerial view like Google earth but better. It's an interactive map.

I can't give you the direct link as it is too huge...but go here..

http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/

Type in at the top .... Mairie
Type in at the second.... Rennes les Bains 11190

Then on the next page you want option one which is the above mentioned Mairie and you click on the small purple wording that says "view aerienne".

give it a mo...and you have an interactive map clearer in some respects to google earth....You start at the Town Hall in Rennes les Bains and you can take it from there.

Attention..dont go anywhere near the top right hand corner of the pic or you get adverts and you have to click the little close bit but appart from that it's simple.
If it doesn't work I've got an item of headgear that needs eating!

Should have read that bit first. Very annoying. Tried to close the advert and ended up opening it. But - very good link, thanks. Good imaging, and will be useful in the future for other bits of France too.

Exactly...just type in Mairie of any town & Bob's your Uncle.
I'm glad it worked, I didn't fancy eating the hat much.

I'm going to add this to this thread, because it's about Cardou, and it happened to me, and it's probably nonsense, but it helps to continue building a picture about odd things that happen around that mountain, and odd claims that are made about it.

I don't have many RLC anecdotes, because I rarely interact with other people when I'm down there; mostly just drift about doing my own thing, going for walks, looking at views, etc. But every now and then you meet someone and talk them, and it can be rewarding (for example, met the late Jean-Luc Robin there once, and had the best RLC conversation of my life).

Once I met someone who told me something about Cardou. I didn't (and don't) really believe it, but it happened, and it was slightly interesting at the time.

I was in RLC, would have been May 2004, a Saturday morning, and back then you could go into the cemetery by the church. It's a very beautiful spot, and particularly so on that sunny day, with all the spring flowers growing out of the top of the cemetery wall blowing about in the breeze. Lovely. One of the nicest days I've spent there. Anyway, I go into the cemetery, and there's this big tour group getting shown around, plus there's me, and there's this old man standing by the north-east corner of the church, smoking a roll-up. So I'm wandering about, waiting for the tour group to leave so I can go and look at Sauniere's (former) grave, and they eventually go, and I'm looking down at the grave, and this old man suddenly rocks up beside me, starts talking to me. I can speak, read and write French a tiny bit, but I find understanding the spoken word next to impossible, especially in the south, and I tried to tell him this, but he went on undeterred.

Now, I know this is making a judgement based on appearance, but this guy had a very tanned and weather beaten face, and the sort of hands that spoke of a life of hard physical labour. I'd guess he wasn't part of the tour group that had just left, but was from the locality. What I'm saying is, he didn't strike me as your typical esoteric type; he seemed like a very down to earth kind of guy.

And he keeps going on, and on, and on about, not Cardou, at first, but Bugarach. About ten times he must have mentioned it, like a mantra. And that was a little bit interesting, but then we start walking around the churchyard together, and he's still nattering away, and I'm doing a lot of nodding and smiling, and understanding about one word in half a dozen, and we get to the lower part of the cemetery, that looks out over the top of Blanchefort to Cardou, in the middle distance.

And then he pointed a tremulous nicotine stained finger over at the mountain, and said something I did understand, and will always remember. And he said it with absolute conviction in his voice.

"Cardou. C'est le tombeau du Christ". (Cardou - it's the tomb of Christ)

I really don't think this guy had read "Tomb of God". My guess - and of course it's only a guess, given that I didn't really know what he was talking about - is that he'd grown up with that story, genuinely believed it.

I don't believe it, myself, but it struck me the way he obviously did. It seems to be a legend with some resonance.

Anyway, of little import, but another small brick to add to this thread about Cardou.

Silvain doesnt think Jesus is buried at Cardou, i thought he believed it to be somewhere in Alet??

I think, however, that there is an important burial in Cardou ; )

Old local was probably gesturing towards Cardou and saying something like "Some crazy foreigners believe Jesus Christ was buried up there. Can you believe that? Wish all the tourists would go over there and leave Rennes le Chateau alone."
(Well, that's what most locals I know would say)

Or as ex-Mayor Pujol was once heard to say as he emerged from his house one morning to face the day - "Il y a trop d'etrangers dans le monde." Hear hear!

You're right, Sandy, he does. As set out in book called : "Jesus-Christ Bar-aba : The Angel of the Last Judgement : First Revelation". Not the pithiest of titles. Subtitle on the cover reads : "The real Christ is Jesus Bar-Aba, King of the Jews. He was not crucified. And he was not resurrected. His tomb is hidden in Alet-les-Bains (Aude, France)".

Don't be tempted to go looking for it, though, on one of your trips. It's buried under the mountain behind Alet, and protected by vials of bubonic plague! Or something like along those lines.

More unbelievable still is that I paid 39 Euros for it in the RLC bookshop. A fool and his money ..... A fun book in a way, though, just for its, sort of, delirious exuberance, and completely stuffed full of ideas, however seemingly off the wall. But I certainly wouldn't pay 39 Euros at today's ruinous exchange rate.

Well, I don't suppose I could really blame any local for thinking that of etrangers like me, sadly. But on this occasion, whilst I might not have understood much of what he was saying, his body language and expression suggested he was speaking sincerely and from the heart. But maybe not. I don't know really; just quite a vivid memory of the last time I visited the cemetery.

"Il y a trop d'etrangers dans le monde." ...

Oui mais.... sans les étrangers les petites communes de la belle France serait à l'abandon..... no?

Oh dear, I think I was too sharp and cut myself!

Richard - only teasing, but the thought does give me a fresh perspective on the sacred tomb on the blasted hillside near Durban. Perhaps, just perhaps, Andre was trying to do us all a big red-herring-shaped favour.

Sheila - it's simply a deliciously absurd thing to say, but from the perspective of a village with 80-odd souls it is also a truism. There are people in Rennes le Chateau in their 80s who are viewed as "etrangers", because their parents were born in Couiza.

Nicole...agreed.
point taken and very well put.

Be nice to think I might have done, but I have no idea what Silvain looks like. This guy didn't strike me as your archetypal RLC researcher - not that there is such a thing, I suppose - but (in casting of archetype terms) I'd have said a farmer, or maybe a retired flic. About 5'10", slightly stocky, sixty-ish, dark hair going grey, weatherbeaten face ... I'm trying to think of someone well known he might have resembled, but can't, hence his "normalcy", you see. The nearest I can come up with is the French actor Michel Lonsdale, but not when he did Bond, or (one of my all time fave films, btw - Ronin), slightly less smooth than that. Think of him when he played the chief investigator in Day of the Jackal, if you ever saw it. Little bit like that.

Google up his name, there are photos out there....I was just looking at a couple of them.

A couple here...

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgur ... SZjAfCrOBi

Is that the usual suspects?

They look like they imbibe a fair amount...either that of they've been rode hard and put away wet.

Yes to all three!

Thanks, Nicole. I can now categorically state that Pierre Sylvain was not the person I met in that graveyard.

I love this detective work...we're actually getting somewhere!

Ditto to that.
And I do genuinely understand the resentments that must be felt towards the descending hoards. Why I sometimes feel faintly embarrassed going up there.
But then again I do spend a lot of money there, including on slightly dotty books by P Silvain. That and long lunches.