Lourdes, France

Pau is like the center of a star.  It’s a great starting point for other towns, and day trips are something not to be missed.  Fortunately, high-quality bus service and efficient train networks enable just that.

I have to stop here. 

I am green with envy!  The train service here is convenient, precisely on time, clean, up-to-date, and comfortable.  It is far easier than the hassle of air or car travel. The ride is smooth as glass.  You hardly know you are moving until you look out the window and see the landscape sweeping by.  Trains connect big cities to medium-sized cities and buses in first-class style connect to smaller villages. 

And as another preface, to be sure, everything here is not shockingly beautiful, ancient, historic or quaint.  Ordinary people live here and work here.  There are suburbs, schools, universities, and industrial areas.  In my stories, I usually focus on the stuff we’ve never seen before.  But in France, if you need something like a Walmart Superstore, The Home Depot, or Costco, similar big box stores are here but far out of the city center. 

We bought train tickets to Lourdes.  At the station for our departure, they told us our transport had been changed to a bus.  OK.  We found that bus and away we went in nice cushy seats with big panoramic windows.  The countryside was pretty.  It was a lush green.  In the background were the great Pyrenees Mountains.   This part of France is very agricultural.  We sped past field after field.  Corn is a major crop here – not wine.  They also grow fields of sunflowers.  Some of the corn and sunflowers are grown for oil production but most of the corn and sunflower seeds grown here are for exports.

The French countryside we saw today is astoundingly beautiful!  Picture a sparkling river right along the train tracks, winding through green hills and fields, passing an occasional ancient stone farmhouse with a slate roof, and seeing the mountains in the background.  Even the best of imaginations cannot conjure the rich beauty that lies here. 

From the big square window of the train, we began to see traces of the Lourdes, more buildings, a steeple here and there, clusters of suburban homes, and the rocky river rushing south back toward Pau through its pretty green banks.   Ahead we could see more buildings and town’s houses nestled in the big valley.  Closer to the city center we passed a huge church adorned with two giant towers and a huge gleaming golden crown.   From the floor of the valley stood a tall natural granite landform like a pedestal on which a massive fort overlooks its realm. 

People travel to Lourdes primarily as a pilgrimage to the Grotto but oh my, the town is pretty just sitting down low in a valley by the River Gare de Pau among great mountains to the east and north.  The castle there on that great stone pillar is like something from an olden story.

The Grotto:  In 1856 a young girl saw the first of eighteen apparitions at Massabielle Grotto.  Each apparition is said to be of the Virgin Mary who told young Bernadette,  “Go and drink from the spring”, “Go and tell the priests to build a chapel here”, and “Have the people come here in procession”. She did.

People heard and began to come, first out of curiosity and then by faith and hope when they heard the stories of healing that took place from touching, bathing, and drinking the water from the grotto’s spring.

A statue of  Our Lady of Lourdes based on Bernadette’s descriptions rests in the niche where the apparition is said to have appeared to Bernadette.

Today this place is very commercial.  Thankfully, the European summer vacation period is over.  The throngs of people are no longer in town but the streets were still crowded.  Shop after shop offering holy relics, statuaries, rosaries, and candles lined the entire half-mile street to the entrance to the grotto, Santuaire Notre Dame de Lourdes.  This pilgrimage property is huge, encompassing 126 acres; there are 22 separate places of worship.  Per Wikipedia, as of February 2018, the Roman Catholic Church officially recognized 70 miracle healings.  I’ll say this, it is something to witness the crowds who still make their way here for the water, meditation, reflection, prayer, and peace.

Onward, the castle was a commanding place we could not miss.  We walked there and low and behold there was an elevator to the top of the pillar. 

The castle dates back to Roman times but only remnants of those structures exist today.  What stands today are foundations from the 11th and 12th centuries and reinforcements made in the 13th and 14th centuries and again in the 17th and 18th centuries. Inside, is now a museum that interestingly focuses on the Pyrenees culture in the rugged snowy mountains.

The views from the castle were phenomenal.  We could see for miles.  We found it pretty fabulous.