Pedalled down to Lourdes, gateway to the Pyrenees.
Lourdes is a town of just 15,000 that, in normal times, receives 5 million visitors a year. How could this be? We’ll,
In 1858 a young girl, who’d been brought up in the Catholic way, told her priest that the Virgin Mary had made herself known to her on 18 separate occasions and had told her (in her own Occitan tongue) that she [Mary] had also been conceived ‘without sin’. This story got back to the Pope who was struck by the fact that this story agreed with one decided by him just four years earlier. And so the Lourdes Tourist Industry was born. It comprises street after street of shops selling everything from Gold Crucifixes to Virgin Mary Fridge Magnets.
Interesting place.
The current lack of tourists means that there is huge overcapacity in rooms. This means that the hotels are all trying to undercut each other to get the business. Plenty of 2* and 3* hotels with rates of £40/night. We went for the 4* Hotel Solitude.
The cycle up from Mont-de-Marsan was ok. The first bit was through nice countyside but thereafter it was just mile after mile of maize (corn on the cob). I’m not sure what the French do with this vast amount of corn because you rarely see it on menus.
Took the ride quite easy today - we want the legs to be as fresh as possible for the mountains.
Riding into Lourdes the first shop we saw was a huge pharmacy (oh the irony).
Off to find the pool. Evidently there’s a big heated one here somewhere…