A morning in Lourdes (Saturday 27th July 2013)

We checked out of the hotel just before 10:00am and followed the signs to La Grotte, getting a park not too far away as luck would have it. The site of the religious artifacts lis ocated on the backs of the River Pau walking distance from the centre of town. The famous grotto where St Bernadette spoke to the Virgin Mary is easy to find – a) because there has been built a great big Cathedral on top of it and b) because there are thousands of people milling around the site. The church has a very large plaza in front of it. We crossed the small bridge over the river in search of the place to gather some holy water. In amongst a couple of thousand people Kerry found two lovely ladies from Liverpool and asked directions. They happily escorted us back across the bridge to the rock upon which the church has been built to a set of taps where the spring water was freely available. We filled up a few small bottles and one large one. It is believed that by drinking or bathing in the water one can be healed of sickness.

Is it true? Maybe. I was feeling tired and indeed of a stop later in the day, took a swig of the water in the big bottle and felt fresher immediately! But anyway, many, many people were at Lourdes in the hope that they might be cured or relieved of pain. The Church provides any number of wheelchairs and , indeed, wheeled beds so that the pilgrims can make it to the water, the church or receive at blessing in the grotto. The girls said they felt sad seeing all the sick people, perhaps desperate for a last chance. I saw all the young people who were there providing assistance to them and felt happy about that. During our time there, the sanctuaries were filled with happy, smiling young people from all parts of the Catholic world, both to complete there own pilgrimage to this holiest of places and to help elderly and infirm people from there own communities do the same. The ladies from Liverpool were two of a contingent of 1700 from the city making the pilgrimage. For each of us visiting Lourdes was an uplifting experience.

BTW, one useless piece of information I found interesting. It is a credit to the people of Lourdes that this town of 15,000 people can service the 5,000,000 pilgrims and tourists who visit each year. Lourdes has 278 hotels, second only to Paris on a per capita basis. Also, given the recent major flooding in October last year and June this year the town was in excellent shape.

Where to next? Stephen and Christina had loaned us a travel guide entitled “The Back-roads of France” - an excellent book to get if you ever plan the same sort of trip as this one. Kerry had done some research on yesterday's lazy afternoon and had reckoned the drive through Le Tarn and Le Lot might be nice. So we headed for Albi in Le Tarn about 230kms away.

Albi's claim to fame is an enormous Cathedral in the centre of town. Unlike every other one we had seen which were built with large stones, the Cathedral of St. Cecile is built of brick. It too, was stunning inside. I got an anti-Tardis sense about the building. It seemed to be smaller on the inside than the outside! Right next to the cathedral was Albi's other attraction – the museum of the work of the late 19^th century/early 20^th century artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was was born on the town. You would easily recognise his work as those quintessentially French drawings and “bill-board art” of the turn of the last century.

After a quick bite in the Place we headed off as per the guides directions. GPS-girl had different ideas. She hadn't read the guide and wouldn't accept Emily's instructions. So we concede to her wishes and let her guide us. We were at least in the right neighborhood, if not the exact roads. The country through Le Tarn is so different from Le Corbieres. Green, luscious, little stone villages every few kilometres, winding narrow roads just wide enough for 1.5 cars, small pockets of land under crop (mostly corn and some pasture), amongst dense oak forests in rolling hills. This is exactly the country we were looking for.

It was past 6:00pm so we started looking for somewhere to stay for the night. Emily and GPS-girl pointed us to a hotel in the village of Caylus. Unfortunately, the hotel was full bit the proprietor suggested we visit the Office de Tourisme around the corner. The lovely lady there found some accommodation in what I would describe as holiday apartments. Sitting on a large plot of open land on the hill across from the town were about two dozen individual three-level self-contained cottages. The chap who runs the place was very helpful.

We dropped our bags and headed into town. The sky was black and threatening to pour. Lightning was about. We parked the car to search for a place for a drink and dinner. Before we had found one the heavens opened up, we were stuck in the open and we we were quickly drenched to the bone. We found a bar with attached restaurant and had a drink while we drip dried. After the drink we made a booking for the restaurant, quickly dashed back for a change into dry clothes and went back to enjoy a real French restaurant. Our waitress was a double for Lisa and was very kind and considerate. I think she appreciated our feeble attempts to speak French, will Emily's coaching, of course. In fact, the local parish priest we had met earlier in the bar (where else would you find one!) and his drinking companion both thought Emily spoke French very well, but way too fast for them! The meal was fabulous, as was the bottle of local vin rouge. We headed home at about 10:30pm. The end of a great day. Well, not quite!

Emily I were downstairs sampling some Corbieres vin rouge when Kerry called out about two big moths that has come in the open upstairs window. We went to investigate. Big moths, they were not. Bats, they were!! Kerry cleared out down stairs and Emily and I tried to shepherd them back out the window. One managed to find his way out, then in again, then out again but the other didn't. After about 20 minutes of chaos I unhitched one of the window curtains and finally caught him in that. We let him go back to the darkness, closed the windows and went to bed.