Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Oscar Wilde

Corinne was a saint. She could, she told me, have charged a good deal more than 25 euros a night for a room if she did AirBnB. But she didn’t because she simply preferred the pleasure of meeting genuine pilgrims and charging them a nominal rate for a room.

Corinne lived in an apartment of her great grandfather’s house in the centre of Lourdes. There was room for 6 pilgrims in her home which was immaculately furnished. She was an artist and an interior designer.

There were three other pilgrims staying at Corinne’s. One of them poked her head out of the window just as I was on the point of departure. It was one of the two pilgrims I had bumped into in Arès and Bagnères de Bigorre. I had set off before them the previous day. How on earth had they over taken me? The answer was simple – they had taken the bus!

I don’t know exactly what I expected from Lourdes but not the fact that it was a heaving tourist trap. The centre of town was stuffed full of gift shops selling all sorts of religious knick knacks including images of the Virgin Mary in the grotto at Lourdes where she apparently appeared in 1858 to the 14 year old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous.

I don’t presume to know what exactly occurred in the grotto in 1858 or how many people have subsequently been miraculously cured of ailments (the Vatican’s official estimate is 69) but for those interested in examining Roman Catholic miracles in greater detail, I can heartily recommend John Cornwell’s book on the subject, Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light – Travels in Search of the Miraculous and the Demonic.

It was only just past 8am but already hordes of tourists were heading towards the Abbey of the Lady of Notre Dame and the grotto behind it.

I headed out of Lourdes walking along the path which hugged the banks of the river Gave de Pau. It looked very fishable but there wasn’t an angler in sight.

At Saint Pé de Bigorre I took the opportunity to replenish my provisions with some tinned mackerel, grated carrot and a real cholesterol killer in the shape of some duck liver paté.

Bétharram is famous for it’s subterranean caves where France’s first underground cave railway opened in 1903. The incredible array of stalctites and stalagmites on display in the limestone caves make Wookey Hole in Somerset look just a little bit parochial

Bétharram has a darker side to its history in the form of the Sanctuaries of Lestelle-Bétharram. This is the site of an elite Roman Catholic boarding school, Notre-Dame de Bétharram, which was the scene of a series of accounts of violent beating, rapes and sexual assaults carried out by  school masters on pupils. The shocking revelations have turnef it into France’s biggest child sex abuse scandal. It’s deeply ironic that Lestelle-Bétharram is just a few kilometres down the road from Lourdes.

The climb out from Lestelle-Bétharram took me pazt a series of oratories depicting the stations of the cross leading to Calvary. At the too of the hill on a leafy esplanade you are suddenly confronted with the sight of Christ on the cross besides two beggars and behind this another chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

By the time I reached the summit I must confess to feeling slightly queasy. It could have been the after effects of having consumed an entire packet of duck liver paté at the bottom of the hill or it could have been the cumulative impact of exposure to such a concentrated stream of religious imagery in a short period of time.

I arrived in Bruges shortly before 4pm and made my way over to the village café ti find Pauline, the owner of the gite. The café was completely desrted apart from a lady behind the bar, whom it transpired was Pauline. After downing a quick half pint of lager, I hopped in her car and was whisked off to the gite – a farm located in the middle of nowhere that had belonged to her parents.

An hour or so later while I was still in the shower I heard a car draw up. It was Pauline with a French pilgrim. Without bothering to introduce himself, he disappeared immediately into the adjoining bedroom and then, for the next hour and a half, proceeded to talk in extremely volubly to what I presumed was either his mother or current girlfriend followed by another call to what I presumed was his wife (or ex wife) and young daughter.

He appeared later in the evening to prepare his supper but again made no effort whatsoever to introduce himself or engage in conversation of any kind!

I left him to his own devices. Sometimes in life you just have to take the rough with the smooth and accept the fact that the world is full of Saints and Sinners!