187 Basilica Our Lady of Bon Encontre, France

We are in the South West of France, somewhat nearer culturally to Toulouse

than to Bordeaux, in what is now the suburbs of Agen

(From the Quatre feux go straight on, going away from the gravier,

and after the market, take that road going past the Ecole Normale).

This was actually the church which my wife attended when she was

a child, and at one time my Mother-in-law Teresa Antoinetta sang

in the choir. This was some time after the first church on the site

had been built, at the very beginning of the 17th century.

In the 16th century the village was already a place

of pilgrimage in honour of the virgin Mary, after the 1510 discovery

of a wooden statue of her with allegedly special powers.

The present basilica was completed in the 1850s, but bits of the

earlier chapel are still there.

Nicely coloured pillars and stained glass.