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If you are cold tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you.
If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.
William Gladstone
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Cafe Riviera Sol (formerly 'La Terrasse'), Lourdes - Wednesday 24th July 2013
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Tea Takers
Sarah Ryan
Paul Ryan
Olivia Ryan
Mary Clare Doran
Alex Farmer
Simon Johnson
Roseanne Kay
Kitty Kay
Gillan McGrath
Sandra McNally
Helen Merrington Rust
Andrea Pass
Fleur Willson
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I have been coming to Lourdes with the Oxford and Cambridge Universities Lourdes Pilgrimage for sixteen years (with a few years off for small child related activites), and Paul started some two years before, thus this pilgrimage is a hugely important part of our life. So, despite a strong suspicion that France might not easily provide afternoon tea as we know it, it was very necessary that some type of afternoon celebration featuring at least a cup of tea and some cake should be part of the odyssey.
Despite the fact that our week in Lourdes is extremely busy, there always seems to be a reasonable amount of time to sit in cafes and catch up with others after the work of the day. The 'Terrasse' (as it shall forever be, however hard the owners might try to make us think otherwise) is an old favourite and a place associated with much entertainment and friendship (it was also the place we discovered that a five-year-old Olivia had her first wobbly tooth - a place of significant omen, then...)
With its large eponymous terrace overlooking the river, with stunning views up to the fort, it is an attractive setting some way removed from the busy streets. It is very popular and can get very busy, but a group of us who could make it foregathered after those of us working in the baths had finished the afternoon session, and found a long table free - the cabinet of cakes was promising and the taking of tea 'a la Francaise' could begin.
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Our pilgrimage group is very diverse and over the years there have been people who are constants - the longest standing has, I think, been coming for 47 years; others who join us for one or two visits; some who come back after long breaks, but always it is a great community, where everyone is equally part of the group, and the friendships formed here are very important to many of us. Some people you only meet once, others you only see this one week each year, but the bond we share remains particularly powerful.
We all work, in different capacities, for the Hospitalite Notre Dame de Lourdes, which runs the sanctuaries and facilitates the visits of both large pilgrimages and individual visitors, and runs the ceremonies of the shrine - there to serve those who come to this very special place. Whilst generally tiring, often menial, regularly inexplicable and occasionally bizarre, this work is enormously rewarding and genuinely a great privilege.
Having tea here with some of these friends (and with the 'ghosts' of fellow stagieres and Terasse-regulars-past hovering on the air) was very special indeed.
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Attempting to recreate an English afternoon tea would have been folly, but the delights of French patisserie helped to make up for this. The Tarte au citron and Tarte aux pommes were both much enjoyed by those who chose them, and for others crepes provided a pleasing alternative.
A few of us did drink tea, and this now brings me to one of my most serious concerns about the French nation as a whole - tea bags. Why do French tea bags contain so little tea? What is the point of this? Even when you buy Twinning's English Breakfast tea here you are on feeble ground. It is a great sadness to me, and, given that the meanness of Ryanair baggage allowances meant that I couldn't stuff my suitcases with adequate supplies, it has been a week of 'not getting enough decent tea' - the sadness of leaving Lourdes this morning was much alleviated by being reunited with my kettle and tin of Taylor's Yorkshire Tea - palpable relief. To return to the afternoon in question, however, by steeping the 'lipton yellow label' for twice as long as advised and with some judicious squeezing, it was pleasant to enjoy something approaching a proper cup.
Others made the (possibly more sensible) decision to seek alternative refreshment.
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Cyril
The 'Terrasse' does not maintain its popularity in Lourdes due to the bonhomie of its waiters. Our waiter for tea, Cyril, provided no contradiction to this. To find that he had actually to take an order for a drink and a cake for each person at the table, seemed to be something of an affront, and he took little care to hide his displeasure. I have been served by him before and noticed a certain surliness in his countenance, but he built on this by developing what might almost be described as a snarl, and employing a less than sensitive delivery technique - note below how Sandra is delicately shoved out of the way as Cyril fulfills her extremely unreasonable request for a crepe.
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Eighteenth Tea - Eighteenth Year
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Lourdes
On the 11th February 1858, in a cave beside the wide river that ran down from the mountains, Our Lady appeared to a young girl, who was searching for firewood with her sister and a friend. Bernadette was a sickly child, who came from a family plunged into poverty and distress. She had little education and was the type of person that it was very easy for others to dismiss. The lady appeared to Bernadette eighteen times between then and the middle of that July, and spoke to her on many of those occasions. She brought a simple message of prayer and repentance, drawing people closer to Christ, and she spoke to Bernadette with great respect and love, which was astonishing to this simple girl.
Eventually, and for a number of reasons, Bernardette came to be believed by many. At the later apparitions crowds gathered to witness her blessed state of ecstasy. The parish priest, and in turn other church authorities, were finally convinced when the lady answered Bernadette's question, as to who she was, with 'I am the Immaculate Conception' - this was a doctrine only very recently professed by the church and one that this young country girl, who could often not even repeat the basics of her catechism, could not have heard about.
During the apparitions, at the direction of Our Lady, Bernadette discovered a spring at the back of the cave that was not previously known, she also asked Bernadette to go to the priests and ask them to build a chapel and come to this place in procession. Soon miraculous healings began to be attributed to the place and thousands of pilgrims flocked to the cave. The first church, now the crypt of the main basilica, was completed in 1866.
Lourdes is one of the most visited Marian shrines in the world, and people come from all over the world, some seeking healing, but more to come to this place where for a short time heaven and earth intersected, and which continues to have a powerful and profound effect on those who come. Because of the healings it quickly became a place of special recourse for the sick - not simply, or even primarily, to come in expectation of physical healing (although the church has recognised sixty-nine 'miraculous' healings, where after extensive investigation there is no physical or psychological basis for the cure), but a place where they experience the power and love of this special place. The sick and the weak are those who are most important in Lourdes and in the large pilgrimages it is the main function of the able-bodied to serve and support them.
I never really wanted to come to Lourdes - like many others my only experience of the place before I visited was plastic water bottles (in the poorly copied shape of a nineteenth century pious statue with screw top crown), or glow-in-the-dark statues, flashing grottoes and sentimental hymns - I was fundamentally uneasy about this type of personal revelation and mystery. Yet without any real knowledge, understanding or conscious desire, I still decided one year that I would go, and like many others, found that call to Lourdes to have been one of the most important in my life. As a place it challenges my aesthetics, my personal preconceptions, it asks me to do things that I would find almost impossible elsewhere and at its heart, beyond the tat and the superficial, it has shown me more about faith and love than almost any other experience in my life. A chaplain to our group once described coming to Lourdes as like taking hold of a spiritual live wire - I think that is the best last word.
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