One last look back on villages in southern France as we made the long journey back to Abu Dhabi …

On our last day of exploring the countryside, we went through the tiny town of Blomac, and found it wanting … and then we fought through the traffic that seems to girdle the roads around Carcassonne at any given hour, and got south into the hills … to Limoux.

I like the idea of being away from the hustle and bustle of things. That’s kind of the point of Languedoc. But Limoux is where you might go if you were in a French witness-protection program.

Charming town, though. Seems to straddle the two-lane road that comes from Carcassonne. Big enough to be a real town, a very tidy square, surrounded by businesses, apparently several weeks of a  Mardi Gras-like celebration … a population of about 10,000 …

I liked it.

To be sure, we didn’t examine it from stem to stern, but it had a real commercial district, it wasn’t run down, it was scenic as all get out, with green hills on each side and the Aude River running through the town.

And a brasserie on the square served cassoulet, which I had been thinking about all week but hadn’t found. Until Limoux.

But there is such a thing as being a bit too remote. Limoux is a half-hour south of Carcassonne, and a half-hour north of a place called Quillen, which doesn’t amount to much, and if you continue to go south you’re going to run into the Pyrenees … and it’s not like that’s easy to drive over.

So, to live in Limoux, you have to have everything you need in Limoux.  You aren’t quite in the middle of nowhere there … but you can see if it you look hard.

We needed most of two hours to get back to Castelnau-de-Guers, which was no fun, especially at night on the poorly lighted freeway. But that whole area around Narbonne and Beziers and extending up to the foothills … while scenic and mostly countryside, you’re never more than 10 minutes from somewhere else. And the collective feels like a community.

Limoux was too much on its own. A lone wolf of a town. It can happen. I want to be off the beaten path. But not that far off.

I’m glad I went, though, because now I know.