Thrifty Fifty - Sarlat to Loudres

Day 4 – 180 miles Sarlat → Lourdes

Accommodation – Alliance Hotel (has its own parking)

After a continental breakfast, including more croissants, ham and cheese (of course, we’re in France), we said goodbye to new friends and continued south.

Plotting a path through the countryside, passing the farmlands, leafy boulevards and châteaux of the south helped the miles slip by with ease.

The temperature increased with each mile covered, sweat rolling down my back as my arteries clogged, dining on yet more croissants and cakes at lunch.

The landscape continued to roll around us, pretty as a Constable painting, but now the Pyrenees’ shadowy mass ever present on the horizon. They’re so massive after the easy-going countryside, literally dominating the distance. Paul M commented that they made him nervous just to view.

 

The Pyrenees are tomorrow’s problem; tonight we drop into Lourdes.

 Known worldwide as a Catholic pilgrimage site since the 1858 visions of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous, it now draws around 4–6 million visitors each year. Nuns, priests, monks, crippled and disabled devotees admire the relics and pass endless opportunities to buy plastic religious tat. It all seems odd to us, but we submerge ourselves in the Disneyland-for-religion show.

 Today's route, passing the town of condom. The child within grinned...