Whenever you get on a train in France, make sure you are sitting in the right place! On our way back to Bilbao from Bordeaux, we managed to get literally sidetracked on our train journey, and ended up in the wrong part of France. Luckily enough it wasn’t for long and we managed to get back on track thanks to the rail staff, but not before we had a two-hour and completely accidental pilgrimage to Lourdes!

You can read more about our adventure in Bordeaux at the following link, and you can check out Dax at this link.  

Growing up religious

Coming from a fairly observant Catholic family, the trip to Lourdes would have been something that put me in high regard whenever I was young. In fairness, any holiday to France would have been nice when I was young and the idea of the snow-topped Pyrenees was a far-flung dream. That said, a few family members did it for religious reasons, though these parish-organised trips apparently did have a skiing tie-in. 

Nowadays, I’m much more agnostic in my metaphysical beliefs, which to me means that I keep an open mind on spiritual affairs, though a trip to anywhere with a religious connection will be interesting to me. It's all part of human interaction, connecting the spiritual with the social and eventually the economic, so whether or not something in your own mind’s eye happened or not, there will be a lot of people with a vested interest saying that it most certainly did. 

Lourdes and the Marian visions

And so it goes with this little picturesque Pyrenean town, which was home to a little girl by the name of Bernadette Soubirous. Wee Bernadette experienced Marian visions in a cave on the outskirts of town over the course of several months in mid-1858. After investigation and backing by the Vatican, it became a place of pilgrimage. Millions of Catholics around the world flock here to the town’s daily processions, many in the hope of a miracle for various afflictions. 

Detour!

So there we were, travelling from Bordeaux to Hendaye, which is down on the border, connecting later to the Euskotren service that would take us back home to Bilbao. We had been visiting family in Ireland, and a cheap flight from Dublin to Bordeaux tempted us into a short trip to the ancient wine hub. You can read more about our trip to Bordeaux here. Anyway, you really do need to check your tickets and where you should be sitting on the train if you are on a longer SNCF trip through France as sometimes the trains break into two at various points on the routes. Check out the SNCF website here, and make sure you are on the right track!

The train separated in Dax, one half heading on towards the Basque Country and the towns of Bayonne and Hendaye, while the other, well, headed on. After beginning to feel that the trip was becoming uncomfortably long, my steadfast travel partner Milojee asked why we were pulling into the station at Lourdes?

A quaint wee mountain town

Finding ourselves stranded there, fortunately only for two hours thanks to the magnificent rail staff, we decided to explore. The town is very picturesque and looks like my idea of a ski resort, though the town itself doesn’t have that tradition, or the slopes. That said, it lies less than an hour away from several top-level ski resorts, including Station du Hautacam, Cauterets (Cirque du Lys), Grand Tourmalet – La Mongie/Barèges and Ski Resort Luz Ardiden. 

Visitors to Lourdes have their minds on higher things than ski slopes though, and the presence of religion inhabits most of the town. 

What we saw

We didn't actually manage to see the grotto and basilica, but we went to the town centre, where the Parish Church of the Sacred Heart of Lourdes is situated. Basically, we ended up in the less famous part of town, that being the urban centre. 

The Parish Church of the Sacred Heart of Lourdes is in a little plaza with a few coffee chops. This part of the world is very cold in winter, and the little fountain on the plaza outside the church was frozen over. 

There are statues dotted around the place, mostly related to the famous apparitions, though we did see a monument dedicated to rugby player Michel Crauste, who played for FC Lourdes. He was also the club president and served as a town councillor. We also saw rugby legends honoured in monument form in Dax whenever we managed to visit there. You can read about Dax here, and it does seem to be quite a French tradition to erect monuments to famous rugby masters in their various places of origin or play. 

We used to have a kitchen tray in the house brought back from one of my mother’s trips to Lourdes years ago, a tray with a picture of a panoramic view of the town, basilica and mountains. It looked like a nice place, scenic and mountainous, so somewhere I would have liked to go. While we didn’t see that basilica or grotto, seeing the town and countryside for real doesn’t disappoint. 

Is Lourdes worth a visit?

You probably need to be quite religious to stay for more than a few days, but as a stopoff, it is interesting. It is a scenic and serene place, sitting in a beautiful mountain view, so the scenery itself would move something spiritual within many of us, regardless of which religion you are signed up to and even those who are more general in their spirituality. Personally, I am glad that I got an opportunity to experience the place, despite the brevity of the visit and in spite of not seeing the central point of veneration.