The Roman Roads of Languedoc

The Mountain of the North-West wind.
Just to the north of Salleles d'Aude, on the Canal du Midi, is a mountain called St. Cyr.  On the summit are the remains of a Roman Temple to Cercius, the god of the north-west wind.  On 12th May 2012 I went with friends to see this.
 
 At the summit are remains believed to be of the Temple.  In front of the temple were some depressions in the ground.  It seemed to me that other buildings had been there at one time.
 
  As well as finding the remains of the temple, we saw an aqueduct, or water course, circling the bottom of the hill.  

 
  This was used to re-direct rainwater from the hill to the great Roman site of amphore-making, situated just to the west of Sallèles, which is now the museum of Amphoralis, incredibly well done and rewarding to visit.  Further west still, at the place called Les Parentigues, is another aqueduct used for the same purpose. Later I got the map put and looked at where everything was in relation to everything else; the Romans were the engineers and commercial industrialists of their time, I concluded.
  But today's day was dedicated to the Cers, as the wind is now called, so we continued to Cuxac d'Aude, where the well-known history writer from Perpignan University, André Bonnery, gave us a talk about the winds of the region. 
 
  This was to celebrate the inauguration of a garden on the outskirts of the village, dedicated to the north-west wind.  
 

The wind even joined in the festivities, swirling around and making the newly-erected windmill give us a free demonstration!