The Haute Pyrénées

On our first day in the Pyrénées we visited Lourdes, the place where a young girl had several visions of the Virgin Mary and people with disabilities go, hoping to be healed. We were there on a Sunday and the place was very busy. There was a cycling group there, all decked out in green and white, with signs and a huge candle, saying "From Limerick to Lourdes 2011"! The town itself is full of hotels and shops selling religious memorabilia and white clothing, but it does have a magnificent basilica.

We then did a circuit into the Pyrénées, up the climbs the Tour de France follows, going over the Cols (passes) du Tourmalet, du Soular and d'Aubisque. My God, are they steep!

We went up to the Pont d'Espagne, where there are amazing waterfalls - the photos don't do them justice unfortunately.

The second half of the drive was almost better than the first - huge, dramatic drops from the road and NO BARRIERS. I was feeling most unwell for some of the time! But the scenery is just magnificent - majestic mountains and rivers and also verdant, green hillsides.

No wonder people take their chairs up there just to sit and drink in the views!

We've had the gambit of weather in the Pyrénées - stunning cloudless blue skies and then last night, the most dramatic electrical storm. It started in the late afternoon and went on till after midnight. We're staying out in the middle of nowhere, so it's pitch black. When the lightning struck, the place lit up like someone had turned the flood lights on. Was most dramatic. We've been really lucky with the weather - hasn't been too hot to do stuff and the rain we've had, has been mainly at night. Apart, that is, from the afternoon we were in Rouen. It had started to rain a bit, so we ducked into the tourist office on the square in front of the historic cathedral (Monet did lots of paintings of it). All of a sudden, the rain came down in torrents, the wind came up out of nowhere - you could see it blowing vertically across the square - and the temperature plummeted. That lasted for about 15 minutes and then, suddenly, it went as fast as it had come. Most bizarre.