THE PYRENEES ❘ GREAT DESTINATIONS


“YOU’LL STILL HEAR CATALAN SPOKEN ON THE STREETS, OFTEN FROM THE MOUTHS OF REFUGEES FROM THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR”


hear Catalan spoken on the streets, often from the mouths of refugees from the Spanish Civil War or their descendants. It’s not the prettiest town but it’s an excellent base from which to head into the Pyrenees (for hiking in summer or skiing in winter), or into the scrublands of the Corbières Massif and the many Cathar castles beyond.


LOURDES FEVER


From Perpignan, the D117 heads west, south of the Corbières Massif and through a region called Fenouillèdes. It’s a beautiful if fairly barren drive, taking in the towns of Estagel, Saint-Paul-de- Fenouillet, Quillan, Lavelanet and Foix. The latter, with its triple-towered 10th-century castle and open-air theatre, sits on the confluence of the Rivers Ariège and Arget. Northwest of the town you can take an amazing subterranean boat ride along Europe’s longest navigable underground river, Rivière Souterraine de Labouiche. It’s a great way to escape the summer heat. The D117 continues west, wiggling through the Parc naturel régional des Pyrénées Ariégeoises. At Saint- Martory, if you need to make up time you can join the A64 autoroute, heading west to Tarbes; prettier,


though, is the D817 which takes you on a parallel course through the towns of Saint-Gaudens, Lannemezan and Tarbes. A short drive south of Tarbes is Lourdes, undoubtedly the most religious town in all of France. For most of its existence, it was just a sleepy market town. But then, in February 1858, while fetching firewood, a 14-year-old peasant girl called Bernadette Soubirous saw what she believed was the Virgin Mary in a local grotto. Over the next few months the apparition appeared a total of 18 times. The Catholic Church investigated her claims and later deemed them to be true. Soubirous was eventually canonised while the grotto became a religious shrine, now known as the Grotte de Massabielle.


Whatever Soubirous might have seen, one thing is indubitably true: thanks to her, Lourdes is now one of the world’s most important pilgrimage sites, drawing well over five million visitors a year from all over the world, many of them invalids convinced of the


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From top: The handsome historic centre of Perpignan; Collioure in the shadow of the mountains; the triple towers of Foix castle, which was built in the 10th century


Aug/Sep 2022 FRANCE TODAY ❘ 115


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