At breakfast we learned more about the Catholic church's stranglehold over Ireland from Breda and Paul. Abortion being illegal on the Emerald Isle, many women are forced to travel to England for the procedure. Ireland wanted to make this illegal as well, and were only stopped by their constitution. Paul also told us about being a fireman in Dublin, and how his job mostly involved paramedic work. Reluctantly, we hit the road well past ten in the morning. Big drops fell intermittently from the sky and Fred was tempted to stay another day in Spain. I told him it was all downhill to France, though, and soon we were screaming down the uppermost reaches of the Garonne/Garona river, which flows all the way to Bordeaux.
The sun even appeared for a while to re-energize us. The border was marked by an enormous grocery store, where I insisted we stop to spend our last pesetas. Inside, all of the customers were French, taking advantage of Spain's lower sales tax. The most popular item by far was Pastis 51; the guy checking out in front of me had over ten bottles of the stuff. I stuck with staples, though: water, oranges, chocolate, gum, and a Pez dispenser for Fred. The mountain villages of France looked distinctly different from those we saw in Spain. While Spain's villages had been compact, colorful and lively, the first villages and towns we pedalled through in France were deserted, randomly organized, gray and shabby-looking.
We stopped in one such place called Saint Béat for lunch in a bar. Realizing we had no cash, we asked the inbred-looking barman where the nearest AT M was, and it turned out to be a woman in a hardware store overseeing a drawer full of cash. The meal was copious and uninspired, served by an impertinent, ill-mannered young girl. And the coffee was undrinkable. I told myself and Fred that we could stop in one of the next villages for coffee. But there was no coffee to be found. We rode through village after village and none of them seemed to have a café.
Where we really in France? I had read somewhere that the Pyrenees was one of the poorest regions in the country and that many people had deserted the countryside for the towns. It reminded me of Auvergne, another gorgeous mountainous part of France we've cycled through which had a dearth of cafés. Near the village of Izaourt, we turned off the main road onto a narrow, rolling, winding affair that was the quintessence of the cycling nirvana I associate with France. It took us through and around villages, meadows and woods, vaguely following the valley of the Neste river. Rain made us stop in la Barthe-de-Neste, where we found shelter under some old arcades.
Alas, there was no café to be found, but we did find an old guy who ran a little auberge who said he could make us a pot of coffee. He watched soccer in the adjoining room while we read the paper and pet his crippled old cat. \"She's fifteen years old,\" the old man explained, \"and she has a sore back.\" He went on to tell us that the locals were very appreciative of the rain, since they had been experiencing a drought since February. The unseasonably hot temperatures had made everything bloom six to eight weeks early. He brought us out a bowl of cherries as if to prove this, though I still had a hard time believing him while shivering in the cold rain.
Finally, we gathered up the courage to go back out into the stuff, putting on our dorky-looking rain pants for the seven-kilometer ride to the nearest town with a train station, where we figured we'd choo-choo into Tarbes. Once at the station, however, we learned that the SNCF was on strike (yes, we were definitely in France now) and that no trains were running from there neither that day nor the next. We were told to try another town further down the road; maybe there would be trains there. With black clouds on the horizon and frequent thunderclaps, we wondered if we'd make it before getting dumped on.
And for a while I thought we would. The road was a dream: sixteen kilometers of steady downhill through lush forest. But by the time we made it to the bottom it was pouring. And the stationmaster at Tournay sang us the same song: no trains today. But Tarbes was only twenty kilometers further, and the rain did seem to be letting up, so we decided to push for our original goal, where the Spartacus guide promised a queer restaurant called \"L'Opera des Hommes\" which turned into a disco on Saturday night. It was a tough twenty km, though, including a seemingly endless gradual uphill.
For the first time since leaving San Diego, we resorted to the emergency packets of GU we had brought along --a sticky sugary substance designed to provide athletes with energy. I told Fred I'd never considered myself an athlete, and nearly gagged on the stuff. It didn't seem to help much either, though we did make it to Tarbes, cranky, hungry and totally exhausted from the day's long ride. The town was grey and ugly, with an annoying dearth of places to stay. We ended up at the \"Hotel des Touristes\", with a tiny claustrophobic room up five flights of stairs.
The beds were predictably awful, with the mysterious \"penis pillows\" that are so ubiquitous in the French countryside. Yes, we had made it to France, and I wasn't so sure I was happy about it. Dossier!!!*** Breakfast on the central square in Tarbes validated that it was a ghastly town. The center is dominated by an enormous parking lot, which played host to a flea market on this sunny Saturday. Townspeople picked among the cheap goods as we had a coffee and digested a few pastries. The best thing about Tarbes was the road out of there. It was wide with a shoulder that became a dedicated bike lane.
As we made our pilgrimage to Lourdes, bicycle clubs out for a Sunday ride passed us in the other direction and ignored our waves and greetings. It was not until we rang our bells that we got some reaction from our fellow bikers. The sun warmed us, I'd forgotten what it was like to ride under ideal conditions and was thankful for the reminder that cycling could be an unqualified joy. Soon we rolled into the McDonald's of religious experiences. When I saw a roadside sign advertising the fast food establishment's downtown Lourdes branch I suggested we pop in for a McMiracle.
Tempting as it was, we avoided McDo's once again and headed for the grotto after a quick pizza lunch. The road that winds down the hill to Bernadette's folly is inundated with souvenir stores hawking only postcards and Mary-shaped vessels to hold the sacred water from the shrine. If you know the story of Lourdes, are religious or believe in Mary you can skip this paragraph. Lourdes is famous because this loony little girl named Bernadette imagined she saw Mary in this grotto by the river where the townspeople threw their trash. She began to go there every day, continuing to see the countenance of Mary.
She told others about it. Rumors spread and folks started coming from surrounding villages to gawk at Bernadette having hallucinations. The townspeople got mad and the local law enforcement began to hassle Bernie. Then she really lost it and began to rub dirt and trash on herself while talking to Mary. Somehow while she was digging around in the rubbish she accidentally discovered a spring in the trash grotto (Miracle one). A little bit later Mary appeared and told here that she was \"the immaculate conception.\" This turned out to be important to the Catholics who were looking for some way to figure out how Mary's birth could be virginal in addition to Jesus' (Miracle two).
Mary told Bernie a little later that folks should come to Lourdes as their pilgrimage and that the water was healing (Miracle three -- the most profitable one, and the reason they did not throw her into the loony bin, Bernie becomes a marketeer for the church). Six million suckers a year come to Lourdes. Enough to justify an international airport that sports direct flights from places like Ireland. There is even a TGV (very fast) train from Paris that stops just a few hundred meters from the hoax. Many may wonder what awaits them if they make their own person pilgrimage to see this awesome sight.
It is sort of like Disneyland, but people really believe they are going to see real buccaneers on the \"Pirates of the Carribean\". As you enter the charming riverside compound you see the cheesey cathedral ahead of you. It sits on the cliff above Bernie's grotto. On the way to the church is the disabled visitors center, complete with hundreds of wheelchairs to accommodate handicapped visitors. We saw as many wheeled back away from the grotto as wheeled there. No cures on this day. Just below and to the right of the church is Candleland. Here you can purchase (I mean make a suggested donation for) a candle to place near the shrine.
Andrew stole a three foot long one and carted it with us to the line for entry into the grotto. The line moved quickly as ushers pushed people through. They showed especially pathetic visitors the best places to rub the rocks to receive its magical power. After passing through there is a bin where you can toss your candle and the attendants say that they will eventually light it for you. Andrew and I strongly suspect that they actually take the candle back to Candleland so that it can be resold. Just in front of the grotto is a VIP (very important prayer) area where believers chant, pray, kneel, sing, drool and imagine Mary in the Grotto saying something like \"I am the ultimate marketing tool.\"
Between Candleland and Pirates of the Grotto is Lourdes waterslide equivalent unit. Here thousands line up to fill up their Mary shaped bottles with tap water. Housewives push the infirm out of the way to douse their aching feet with the blessed water that the townspeople are washing dishes and flushing toilets with. They lug gallons of the stuff all around the site with them. No wonder no one was cured. I knocked over some dude with crutches to fill my water bottle with the some and posed for a photo. Just beyond the grotto is a bath house where the infirm can pay to be bathed in the holy healing waters of Lourdes.
Outside people sing and pray while they wheel them in dry on one side and roll them out wet and poorer on the other. The saddest part about Lourdes is that it is not even very interesting. You'd think that if the church was suckering this much money for candles out of cripples they'd make it as spectacular as the Vatican. They could just loan Lourdes a few little trinkets to make it more interesting. And for god's sake, where are the refreshment stands? All you can get is water and that must be fought for.... We escaped after purchasing the requisite postcards and water bottle.
Minutes after leaving we were winding down river to Pau. The scenery was phenomenal though the road busy. With the wind at our backs and a gradual downhill we'd made Pau in less than two hours. We'd intended to stop for a coffee but nothing was open on Sunday until we reached Pau. Another spectacular of sorts was underway in Pau. The grand prix de Pau was in town. One of the last Formula Car races that still utilizes city streets. Auto racing seldom draws my favorite crowd, but Pau seemed accustomed to the event and the city handled the crowd well.
We even managed to get a hotel room in the center without much difficulty. One hotel that couldn't find room for us told us to come back if we couldn't find anything and they promised to figure out somewhere for us to stay, even if it had to be the basement. We had dinner in the old quarter near the Chateau on the terrace and watched the sky turn colors as we ate desert. We watched the slow cars race around the center as the sun started to set. Andy kept insisting that he could drive faster than the racers, maybe even bike faster...