Walking in the Cathar Region offers 22 walks based on the once strategically important castles that dominate the foothills of the Pyrenees. The collection of walks explore the castles and other locations which featured in Cathar history (mostly the 13th century) ensuring that this is an interesting and valuable guide to this area. The three long-distance walks, Le Sentier Cathare, Le Chemin des Bonshommes and the Grande Randonn?es 7 & 71, are also included.Each walk has as its focal point a castle or other location associated with the Cathars. Summaries of the historical connections of each location with the Cathar period are given, and together these relate the story of the downfall of the Cathar Church, from the massacre in B?ziers in 1209 to the siege at Monts?gur in 1244, which ended with the burning alive of over 200 believers who refused to renounce their Cathar faith.

Cut Alan Hinkes in half and you will find 'Mountain Climber' written there; it is his way of life. From an early age in Yorkshire he felt a deep attraction to hilly landscapes, which soon developed into a fascination with mountains and rock climbing. His first summit was Helvellyn in the English Lake District, and he soon progressed to climbing in Scotland and the Alps.