The Virgin

When I was walking the Camino, I was asked on many occasions if I had ever gone to Lourdes.  And when I would say no, I would invariably be told "you must go and bathe in the waters...the energy is so strong".  So of course I was curious.  What energy??

Lourdes is one stop from Tarbes so I decided on a day trip to make the most of my sojourn in Maubourguet.  In hindsight I could have stayed overnight.

The bathing facilities or 'les piscines' as they were called were open twice a day and bathers were requested to line up an hour before opening.  I had been warned that there would be crowds so I decided to opt for the afternoon session and arrive a few hours before.  Officially known as Sanctuaires Notre Dame de Lourdes, it is a big complex nestled amongst the green valleys of the village of Lourdes just north of the Pyrénées National Park.  To cater for the numbers of pilgrims, the train station was significant compared to the size of the village.  There was also a waiting room - full of people in wheelchairs.  On this particular day, it was grey and rather cold and when I got off at the station, it was quiet.  I found the tourist office where I picked up some maps and made my way through the very commercialised area of cheap shops selling Lourdes merchandise.  October was clearly past the peak summer season.  Some of the shops weren't even open.

The sun started to appear and it turned into a crisp but sunny autumn morning.  I was lucky.  The crowds were not there and as I toured the gardens, the cathedral and the grotto, I could feel a certain energy of grace and calmness.  So here already was this energy.....Naturally Lourdes was a visual celebration of the Virgin, and believers came from all over to be cured, healed and blessed.  She was everywhere.

At 1pm , I made my way to the pools to queue up.  There were two entries - one for men and one for women - and rows of pew like benches under cover and next to a low building.  There were no men and perhaps about twenty women who were waiting before me.  Someone came out to hand out papers with information about the pools and a prayer to the Virgin.  As I was sitting on the wooden bench, a voice from the side asked me if I would keep her bag for her while she went to the bathroom.  I turned as I recognised the familiar but now distant Australian accent.  I of course obliged and when she returned asked her the obvious question.  Debra was from Western Australia and was now living in Northern Ireland. This was her third visit to Lourdes.

As the hour approached for the afternoon session, we were asked by the staff, all female volunteers, to pray and sing to the Virgin.  Then in groups of four or five, we were taken inside the building and I have never seen anything like it.  The interior was separated by curtains that formed square cubicles.  Groups of approximately four or five women were taken inside each cubicle and each person was helped by at least one other volunteer to completely strip as the volunteer held a sheet around you to protect your privacy.  In the process I also had to remove my glasses and from then on it was all a bit of a blur. I then waited my turn when I was taken  into the next area which was separated by another curtain and inside there was a narrow marble pool with two steps going down.  There was a statue of Mary on the other end.  The volunteer told me to step down into the pool.  I still had the sheet wrapped around me.  She then asked me to visualise my intentions or prayers and then make the sign of the cross.  Next, she and another woman helped me walk down into the water which was about knee deep and cold.  They told me to walk through the water to the head of the narrow marble coffin like space, kiss the statue and then they pulled me back quite forcibly, whisking the sheet away as they put me into the water so that all of me apart from my head was immersed.  It was very quick.  They then helped me up, wrapped me up again and I went back to the other side of the curtain and got dressed.  It was an experience like no other.  Having said that I am not so sure of the energy of the water.  It was so quick that I barely had time to feel it.

I am not a Catholic so Lourdes does not have the significance that it might have to a believer but I have no doubt that there is something special about the place.  The volunteer helpers were beautiful people.  They embodied such a quite, gentle, compasssionate grace.  And I did feel different after my cold bath.  It was subtle as if the cobwebs inside of me had been washed away and the world appeared to sparkle.  Perhaps one could argue that it was a fabrication of my mind wishing for something to be different or it was the contrast in the light after stepping outside again.  Somehow I don't think so.

The Church is probably one of the biggest group of 'con' men gathered together but they have been clever and lucky in their assets.  Places of worship, such as Chartres, Santiago de Compostela and Rosslyn Chapel, were often built on sacred ground siezed from pagan believers, ground that over time was known to those who were in touch with the rhythms and cycles of nature to hold  a special 'energy', ancient sites of divination .......The Camino is another  jackpot when you think of the number of people that walk these routes everyday from Spain and beyond to reach Santiago.  I was told at the Pilgrim Office in St Jean Pied de Port that over 240 people set off each day from there.  The numbers have probably increased in the last year, due to the film , The Way.  Interestingly, Fiona McLaren in Da Vinci's Last Commission suggests that it wasn't actually Santiago that the original pilgrims had been heading for.  They were going via Santiago to Iona in Scotland, an ancient Druid and later Culdee place of worship.  The Church not wanting to be associated with pagan beliefs cleverly used the original pilgrimage route but directed its pilgrims  to Santiago.  Perhaps Sant Iago isn't even buried there....

Returning to Lourdes, whatever miracles St Bernadette might have manifested, people continue to pay it homage.  It is a sanctuary and I was fortunate to be there on a quiet day so I could really feel the energy of the place.

After emerging from the pools, Debra suggested we have a cup of tea and as we were on our way to the gawdy tourist shops and cafes, she told me about a statue she had bought the last time she was here. It was a small hand carved wooden representation of the Virgin, as I was to later discover.  Out of curiosity although with no desire to buy anything from these cheap shops, I asked her to point it out to me if she saw it.  I was interested in seeing if there was any craftmanship in the work or whether it was along the lines of most of what was on display.

She took me straight to the shop she had bought it from and it was full of statues.  In her effervescent way, Debra told the shop keeper that she had brought me to see the same Mary she had purchased three months earlier.  I'm not even sure if the woman remembered Debra.

Mary came in many sizes and she was rather expensive.  The woman in the shop took them all out of the cabinet to show me.  I really had no desire to buy any but I felt obliged to look at them seeing they had all come out of the glass case.  I could see why Debra had fallen in love with her statue.  It was very finely carved in a light beech coloured wood.  It was as long as my hand and about half the width.  Mary wore a crown and had roses at her feet.  In spite of my earlier thoughts on the tackiness of the Lourdes merchandise, this statue was different.  And although I really didn't want to spend 50 euros on a carving, I could feel her calling me....  What was this place??

I thanked the shopkeeper and told Debra we could go and have our cup of tea now.  Mary was very nice but I would leave her in her case.  We walked across the road to have a tea and a pastry.  I was aware of the time as I had a train to catch back to Tarbes just after 4pm.  Debra suggested I stay with her for the night.  Thinking back on that day, I don't know why I didn't.  I really had no reason to return to the bed and breakfast except to book my hire car on the internet for the next day.  Had I stayed I would have also been able to see the Torchlight Marian Procession at 9pm which I had been told was beautiful.

After our cup of tea, I decided to go back to the statue shop just to have one more look at Mary.  And then of course I had to buy her.  With 15 minutes to spare before my train was due to depart, Debra and I walked back towards the station.  I said my good byes and left her at her hotel as I ran to the train station with Mary wrapped in tissue in a small box in my backpack.

The Bed and Breakfast

Maubourguet is a small village and like many small French villages there is a town centre with a some basic shops including the post office, a few pharmacies, banks, some restaurants, a couple of bakeries and other food stores.  The market comes to town every Tuesday.  Madame's house which was also the B&B was within walking distance of the town.  There was an infrequent bus service from Maubourguet to the next biggest town centre of Tarbes which is 30 km away.

After settling in at Madame's - it was so lovely to have my own room and bathroom after all the hostelling throughtout the Camino - my first venture into the town was to visit the pharmacy.  I did my best to explain my itching to the pharmacist, suggesting that perhaps I had fleas or bed bugs or some allergic reaction to the ham.  As far as I could understand, he reassured me that the itching was caused by a seasonal insect. I was dubious about the diagnosis but went home with ointment that was supposed to fix it.

Staying with Madame who understandably was very stressed, having sold her house, turned out to be an unusual experience...In the first few hours of my arrival she had confided in me about her divorce and her children who did not visit her enough.  She told me about how she had come to set up her B&B and how she now wanted to do that somewhere closer to Paris.  I had come prepared to work hard in her B&B, helping to care for her guests and hopefully in the process improve my French.  I had not anticipated being a counsellor...

The first day was actually very pleasant.  She welcomed me to her beautiful home and after we arrived from the station, we sat down to a delicious light lunch in her courtyard garden.  The weather was still balmy and the autumn had not yet fully set in.  As the hours passed, little by little, the expectations I had of my stay with her started to come apart.  I wasn't to take any food or drink into my room, the cheese had to be stored in the pantry fridge and not the one in the kitchen but the butter was to go in the kitchen fridge and not the other, the crumbs had to be emptied out of the toaster after each use, she couldn't afford to feed me lunch so I should buy my own ingredients to make my lunches (as it became apparent, the rest of my meals consisted of reheated frozen food so she could empty her fridge out), I wasn't to come into the main house until late morning (my room had its own entrance)  because she was busy and didn't want to be disturbed.  And the stories continued about her ex-husband and her children who were hurtful and disappointing and who did not want to visit.....

In and amongst Madame's idiosyncrasies, there were moments of fun and delight -  I had swims in the swimming pool that was set in a garden of lavender and cosmos.  We went to the market to buy groceries and the French markets are real produce markets and a way of life.  The French have their own chains of supermarkets which all appear to be thriving and yet the market culture is still strong and one can find them throughout the country.  I helped Madame prepare meals for her final guests.  We made a dish which consisted of a whole leg of lamb placed inside a pain de campagne with vegetables and olives and baked in the oven.  It was like making a stuffed pumpkin but out of bread - we cut a lid off the top, scraped out the bread, and then placed the lamb and the vegetables and tied the whole thing up with some string.  It looked quite spectacular.  The only problem was the whole construction was too big for the oven and the door had to be forced shut.  I also had time to write and reflect on my Camino.  It was a restful time for the first few days until it became evident that I couldn't keep this up for two and a half weeks...

And I had no transport except the limited bus service to Tarbes, 30 km away, the nearest airport was Aéroport de Tarbes Lourdes Pyrénées and even further away....I suppose I could have walked and continued my pilgrimage... but by now, I had all of my luggage with me and not just my pack.