Carcassonne is a good base for the Cathar country. The string of clifftop castles south of the city — Lastours, Termes, Quéribus, Peyrepertuse — were the final strongholds of southern French dualist Christianity in the thirteenth century, and most are within an hour and a half by car. The wine villages of the Corbières and Minervois, the abbeys of Lagrasse and Fontfroide, and the Pyrenean foothills around Limoux all reward an outing.
Lastours, the closest, has four ruined towers strung along a single ridge thirty minutes north. Quéribus and Peyrepertuse, the two most spectacular, are clifftop eagle nests in the southern Corbières, both about ninety minutes' drive. Toulouse is an hour west by train and worth a day on its own.