Day 14

Escape! Today some of us took a day trip out to the Catholic Pilgimage site of Fatima today. Apart from the extreme nausea inducing minibus ride there and back and the heat it was a super little trip.

It is the site of various apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three child cousin shepherds in 1917 and also the site of the mass witnessing of a miracle called the 'dancing sun' where the sun appeared to spin and cast bright colours and to fall out of the sky in front of a crowd of tens of thousands, again in 1917. It is world famous, although I'd never heard of it until now!

So, we wandered around the shrine; saw pilgrims shuffling on their knees toward the site of the apparition; joined in with outdoor rosary prayers at the site of one of the apparitions; and visited the children's village and another apparition site. It was a beautiful day, a little hot to be in the sun but we found some lovely shady spots. When we stopped at cafés for drinks it was for mineral water only!

In the afternoon, we had a fascinating and informative talk from Belgian K about a largely raw food diet and it certainly has given me 'food for thought' though I'm still looking forward to the curry at C's house next Saturday night more than anything!

We watched a preposterous film called 'Interstellar' which started off well but then descended into farce and was way too long at nearly three hours.