Among other things, the purchase of a fridge magnet was required today.
I was up nice and early this morning for my hotel breakfast of a bread roll, coffee, a croissant, coffee, lots of toast, and coffee; it cost a fiver, so I got my money’s worth. The coffee could have been much worse than it was, but was made marginally better with sugar and a suspension of disbelief. On the table next to me one of my fellow breakfast communers was enjoying some hot chocolate (the sexy thing) which she’d made with milk from a heated… milk urn. I don’t think I’ve never seen that before; I’m not sure it’s Pasteur-approved.
As is usually the case, there wasn’t a plan for the first half of the day but I had a good wander round looking at stuff and avoiding the other people who’d clearly dressed up for Hallowe’en a day early. I’d started making my way towards The Sanctuary when I got distracted by an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at visiting the Château Fort. I’m not sure how this was an unsuccessful mission as it is quite difficult to miss, but I think that on my way to the fort I’d seen a sign for a tower which was something of an anticlimax but gave me the opportunity to have a good long wander around some of the little windy back streets of the old town and eventually to Les Halles and the Parish church (closed for renovations), when the clouds parted and a sign from above compelled me back to the hotel to collect my hat.
Back at the hotel, I happened to look at my phone and the last thing I had open was a Google search for the Funiculaire du Pic du Jer.
When I’d looked at breakfast it was marked as closed and in my caffeine-deprived state I was incapable of finding out when it opened. This time, Google was showing it as “open” and after some quick ablutions I set off on the twenty-five minute walk from the hotel along a straight road with no chance of distraction or getting lost, even for me. I could have taken a bus, but as it had already taken the best part of the morning to realise the thing was actually open, it seemed that in the time it would’ve taken me to find the bus stop and wait for the actual bus to come it was quicker to just get on with it and use my feet.
Following the Apparitions of 1858 and the arrival of the railway in 1866, the number of visitors to Lourdes increased dramatically which, quickly bolstered by a healthy desire to extract as much money from them as possible, facilitated the rapid construction of many other touristy things to do in and around the town.
One of these and arguably the best (in my humble opinion) was the construction of the kilometre-long funicular railway to the summit of the Grand Jer, one of the mountains overlooking Lourdes. It was one of the first funicular railways to be built in France and was built in (only?) 15 months between August 1898 and December 1899. Completion of the project required a lot of dynamite, two tunnels, and the construction of a viaduct.
A return trip is well worth the 12,50€ and takes about eight minutes in each direction with regular ups and downs every twenty minutes with the best views from the right-hand side going up. At the top there are caves to explore (closed today), a bar (open) and restaurant (closed), or — if you’re insane — a mountain bike path back down to the bottom. If you’re not quite insane enough to ride your bike up the 56% incline before you then decide to try your luck hurtling to your doom, the funicular also takes bikes, but you don’t get to sit at the front like an excited child.
From the bar, paths lead to the summit and the views of the Pyréneés and the town below. These are breathtaking, but that’s probably because I’m unfit and had had a beer before setting off.
At the summit alongside is a metal cross, illuminated in blue and surrounded by various platforms which presumably once served for admiring the view but which are now crowded by your least favourite kind of tourist pretending to be Jesus or Madonna for the shits and giggles. And once you’ve had enough of that, the number four bus will take you from the base station to the grotto, via a couple of hairpins, for a good look around the Tat Emporia.
My concession to tat is the fridge magnet. I wish I’d given in to them during the Interrail extravaganza but Companion and I thought such things beneath us at the time. In retrospect this is a crying shame because they’re cheap, easy to transport, and good at reminding you where you’ve been as you’re reaching for the butter. I concede there’s something of a tacky association with them, but I do normally work hard to buy only the classy ones. That said, after an hour looking round the shops, it turns out that everything is relative and those I have ever bought and any I shall ever buy from this day on have now taken on a level of sophistication I never thought the humble fridge magnet could achieve.
The one I settled on for this trip — though I may yet still double-guess myself — is not of the Madge blessing a child with rays of sunshine emenating from their skulls while a lamb looks on and flowers bloom, but instead a full-on sparkly metal representation of the Marian Procession. At least I think that’s what it is; it’s either lots of little lanterns filling the parvis in front of the chapel or hundreds of mini-Munches fleeing Cinderalla’s castle en masse.
On the 2nd of March 1858, during her 13th visit to the grotto, (not-then-Saint) Bernadette was visited once again by the lady dressed in white and blue who demanded she tell the priests to come in a procession and build a chapel for her. Bernadette went to talk to the abbot about it who, perhaps wisely, asked her for the name of the random woman who kept appearing only to her and setting her challenges. For proof, he asked to see the eglantine plant in the cave flower during the winter.
It’s unclear whether he saw this but here we are 150 years later and there’s a chapel and more, so it’s safe to assume that the Wikipedia article that says that Rosa rubiginosa persists well into the winter is probably accurate.
Anyway. The point of this is that at 9pm every day between April and the end of October, there’s short mass in front of the chapel which sees a big plastic Madge in a brightly-lit plastic box being wobbibly paraded from one end of the Sanctuary to the other and back again while the faithful process behind holding candles, drearily chanting in Latin.
If you don’t have the good sense to bring a candle of your own, you can buy one from any number of purveyors of fine candles made in Lourdes. This procession was the last of the season and was a little bit underwhelming as I’d expected there to be more people; candle-light is always pretty.
The familiar sound of cranes migrating south rang out from overhead as I walked back to the hotel. I fancied food but had had a snack around 4pm, so went to bed with a bottle of water.
