So why Le Puy, with the cathedral stuck on a volcanic plug, and a huge statue of the Virgin Mary cast from Russian cannons captured in the Crimean War and melted down? Ummm - because I've never been there? Because I hoped for lentils for lunch? Alas, there was a huge back up on the motorway there, and so we were late, and lunch didn't happen as such. But our morning guide showed us the magnificent cathedral in great detail -
as you can see, plenty of Moorish detail in the stone work.
It was a site of pilgrimage in its own right before it became a jumping off point for pilgrims going to Compostella (and there were lots of those around, in impressive hiking gear and with shells tied to their backpacks) - pilgrimage to the Black Madonna (that's a long story - the original statue may well have been a pagan one, to Isis and Horus; and then the figure was long understood to be Egyptian; and in 1794 taken out of the church and burned on a pyre in the main square in a fit of revolutionary zeal, whilst they yelled Burn the Egyptian, which makes me suspicious of French racism of the time. This, however, is a replacement - a replica of the old one (and indeed, she does look rather Egyptian), made from drawings executed just before she met her demise, is in the Treasury.
Then there's part of an old Roman Temple (celebrating healing waters) built into the cathedral,
and some really wonderful cloisters.
Outside, in the town, these exceptionally shallow steps are to make it easy for donkeys to climb up.
A surprising mural ... suggesting it may rain ...
and a terrific C19th fountain, at the bottom of the town. The details about this online are so unlike those that our afternoon guide told us that I won't even start to unravel ...
... but as you can see, we were to be caught in dramatic thunderstorms on the drive home ...
Shame about the lentils, though ...
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