One last push to Tours.

After Châtellerault we motored and cycled together up to Tours. At Saint Catherine de Fineduis there is a most beautiful, perfectly constructed fifteenth-century church, here in 1429. St Jeanne d’Arc stayed for a night on the way to demand of Charles, Dauphin of France an army to expel the English. Here in front of the statue of St Catherine, she knelt and heard three masses.

The statue of St Catherine was preserved during the Revolution by a resourceful maire who stopped it being burned and many years later it emerged from the earth unharmed.

How wonderful to kneel in the same place as Jeanne d’Arc, nearly six-hundred years before. Here one feels the power of history.

We sat in a shelter having our bread. I heard tinkling above my head and it was St Jacques shells strung around the roof.

We finished our pilgrimage in the magnificent cathedral at Tours. Here I lit a candle in front of the great thirteenth century stained glass window of the covenant above the high altar. Lit a two-euro candle and walked out and on.