A visit to this part of France would not be complete without seeing Lourdes. The town was not quaint, or even pretty to our eyes. We parked by the market and walked down towards the Grotto where St Bernadette saw her vision, through streets lined with shops selling religious knick-knacks. We browsed the first one, amazed at the variety of bottles on offer and settled on a plastic one in the shape of Our Lady. I paid an extra 10c for the painted variety.

When we reached the Basilica we had a quick look inside, but a service was just starting and we didn't want to intrude. The church is enormous but quite simple inside compared to the rich decoration we saw in Zaragoza. There was a very long queue for the Grotto itself, in a shallow cave under the Basilica, but water was freely available from a long bank of taps, so I was able to fill my bottle.

We travelled on towards Agen, stopping to collect a picnic lunch which we ate in a shaded lay-by on the way through the rolling countryside. The scenery was reminiscent of Devon, with fields of cereals, but we noticed a lot of standing water in the crops which will cause problems if it doesn't dry up soon. The rivers are all very fast flowing and murky looking, with whole trees amidst rafts of floating debris.

Once in Agen, we walked along the river bank and met two men spraying what looked like porridge onto the ground alongside the river, from a tanker labelled 'Turf Services'. It was a mixture of grass seed, water, a fibrous material (coir)? and maybe fertiliser - our mixture of French & English got a bit confused. They told us they were making a leisure park area, but until last week the area had been under water due to the combination of exceptionally heavy rain and the Pyrenean meltwater. This area was at least 3m above the present water level, and it looked as though the river was still at least a metre higher than usual.

This evening I saw that central Europe has had major flood problems causing people to be evacuated, so think it's just as well we decided to go back to Spain when we did, as otherwise we would now be in those areas.