195 GOD/DAM...

After reading the new Rally Bible and looking at the route on the map, we have another couple of points of interest to add to the journey, a dam and a church. Intrigued? Let me elaborate.

We are already stopping at points of interest along the route between stages of the event, like visiting Bastogne to see the World War II memorial commemorating the Battle of the Bulge, a turning point in the war. But looking at the Rally Bible, there is a chance to visit a dam in Switzerland on the way to the Gotthard Pass, which is right up my street.

The place in question is the Verzasca Dam (below), which is famous for featuring in the opening bungee-jumping scene in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. Not only can we visit, but for just €250, I can hurl myself off it just like Pierce Brosnan's stunt double did! We are on a bit of a budget, so unfortunately, I will need to give this experience a miss (and that is the excuse I'm sticking to, not that I'm a massive coward!)

We also discovered that we virtually drive past Lourdes on our way from Séte to San Sebastián.

Growing up, there were regular pilgrimages from Liverpool to Lourdes, usually by coach, by devout Catholics who wanted to visit and bathe in, or drink, the holy waters that flow through the Grotto of Massabielle (Grotto of the Apparitions).

Legend has it that in 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to a local woman and told her to dig at a certain spot and to drink from the small spring of water that began to bubble up. Almost immediately, cures were reported from the water, and the legend grew. Pilgrims came from across the world to take advantage of the water's healing properties. Now there are an estimated 3 million visitors each year, and we will add to that number.

A couple of statistics I find incredible about Lourdes are the fact that, despite welcoming millions of visitors each year, the town has a population of just over 13,000 people. Also, it has approximately 350 hotels, offering around 40,000 beds, making it the city with the second-highest number of hotel rooms in France after Paris. Mindblowing.

So we are adding a couple more stops to the trip. The first is a testament to man's ability to create power; the second is a testament to man's need to connect with a higher power. Quite the contrast.