Today, we travelled from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Asque to meet with Kathie and Graeme... the plan is to walk some paths in the Pyrenees... drive to some of the mountain peaks... perhaps pop over to Lourdes to watch a few miracles.
We started pretty early and were surprised to see lots of pilgrims along the road in places where they would have needed to start at 6 AM to have reached the isolated positions in which we saw them. They looked like they were putting in a solid effort... flushed faces... focused eyes... too stressed to return the waves we were giving. In the tiny village of L'Hopital-St-Blaise we talked to a pilgrim who had been averaging 40 klms per day... that's 8 hours of walking at a speed of 5 kph... quite an effort to sustain over a couple of weeks. This chap has planned to stay in Navarrenx for a week. "Do you need to recuperate", we asked him. "No... doing the pilgrimage puts you on such a spiritual high... I just want to sit and enjoy the feeling", he replied.
He was washing his clothes in a stream beside the small ancient church in L'Hopital-St-Blaise hanging them out to dry on the wall surrounding the church. This spot had evolved to serve the pilgrims... first as a hospital to cure the ailing Pilgrims... a lot of them were making the trip seeking a cure for an ailment... and in the middle ages, there were thousands upon thousands of them. The field hospital grew into a house and eventually became a church. This one was founded by a priest who had special healing powers. Local farmers would pay to him in the belief that his blessing would cure their sore throats and diseases of cattle. I have included his picture below for you to use if you have a sore throat or have any sick cattle.
The area here is simply beautiful. The foothills of the Pyrenees have very fertile valleys and get plenty of rainfall. Not what I was expecting at all.
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