A religious experience

Hello and welcome to the latest blog on September 3^rd 2021. This has been a momentous week for us as our trip back to the UK is now booked and feels like it might actually happen. We depart from Bilbao on September 7^th on the overnight crossing to Portsmouth. We usually take the Eurotunnel but chose the ferry this time as we couldn’t face that long drive and we are also aware that our old van is showing her age and she probably wouldn’t appreciate such a long journey either. We haven’t seen our families for over a year, and our friends for 18 months, but we shall now spend almost a month on a grand tour, trying to see as many of them as possible.

With the garden at Le Shack back under reasonable control again, it began to feel as if we were just treading water, waiting for the departure date to arrive, and so we decided that a camping trip would make better use of the time. We found ourselves a small site, next to the river, only a forty-five minute drive away with cycle trails and walking from the door. One of the cycle trails went into Lourdes, a pilgrim town that we had not yet visited so it seemed there would be plenty to do.

Lourdes is a strange place. It brought to mind childhood memories of a fading seaside town back in the UK, but instead of shops selling candy floss or sticks of rock, and arcades of jangling slot machines that were always so irresistible to me and my brother as small children, the shops in Lourdes were dedicated to separating the pilgrims from their money with a simply astonishing selection of religious memorabilia.

There weren’t that many people wandering the streets, although in a normal year as many as four to six million people visit this town. It became a sacred place in 1858 when 14 year-old Bernadette Soubirous saw multiple visions of The Blessed Virgin in a grotto near Lourdes. During one of these visitations Bernadette fell into a trance and began to dig in the earth. A puddle appeared, soon turning into a lake, the waters of which were reputed to have healing powers.

Pilgrims come from all over the world to see this now sacred spring but we found it all rather overwhelmingly commercial, and a bit depressing under grey skies. Just as we made the decision that we’d prefer to be cycling along the river, the heavens opened and we decided that a better option was to find a café, have a coffee and wait it out. We waited…. and waited, but the rain was persistent and there comes a point when the waiters are looking at you pointedly and you know it is time to either leave or buy lunch.

By the time we got back to our campsite we were soaked to the skin but a few hours later it dried up long enough to manage a short ride in the opposite direction.

We woke up to a steady downpour the next morning, with more of the same forecast for the next few days, and decided, reluctantly, that the weather had beaten us. We packed up and returned home. At least we had managed two nights away.

I’ll leave you with a picture of a contented cat. I emptied out my summer pots of their dead plants before I left and Spot has found one of them makes an excellent bed.

The blogs for the next month might be a little less regular but I will post when I can. At the moment we are keeping fingers crossed for a calm passage across the Bay of Biscay in a few days time.

All the best.

MJ