Rennes-le-Château and Rennes-les-Bains

17th January 2016 at Rennes-le-Château!

   
  By 11-15 the church was crowded - everybody was waiting for the Blue Apples to appear.  It's a completely natural phenomenon that appears for three days of the year, caused by the sun shining through the stained glass windows.  And the sun always shines!  This year it was really bizarre - cloud and cold heavy rain on the 16th, beautiful sunny sky and no wind on the 17th, then rain and cloud again on the 18th!

  A murmer ran through the church.  The blue apples (and apples of other colours too) were appearing.  They come first by the first Station of the Cross.

   
  Then they move towards the pulpit and another lot arrives;  and they were blue!

     


  The date 17th January, plays an important role in the Rennes-le-Château legends. The priest, Bérenger Saunière, fell ill on this day (and died a few days later) while the châtelaine of the castle, Marie de Négre d'Ables, confided her secrets to her priest and died on this day.  It is the Saint's day of St. Anthony the great, whose statue is in the church, and Saint Sulpice, and Sainte Roseline, the Provençal saint.  There is a church to Saint Sulpice in Paris and in this church is a line on the floor which follows the passage of the sun - as do the Blue Apples.  This line was called the Roseline by Pierre Plantard and if continued as a Meridian it passes through the graveyard of Rennes-les-Bains!

   
  I'm not sure if the Devil approves of all this.  There is a tee-shirt for sale in Le Jardin de Marie with a message from the Devil on it;  "It's all right for you lot, but I've got to live here!"

  Well, we couldn't go to "chez Morgan" for lunch because he was organising the festive meal for the "Cercle du 17 Janvier" in the Salles des Capitelles, or village hall.  This was a wonderful event in the French style, like it started late, and everybody was changing seats, and there weren't enough places set, and chairs and serviettes had to be rushed in from somewhere and extra carafes of red were added to the tables . . .

   
  It was excellent, the menu was salade de Pays, with mountain ham and paté de fois gras, Boeuf Bourguinon with rice and a courgette flan, then a plate of three cheeses, then a raspberry cake dessert . . . and then there were speeches, where various researchers and writers shared the secret nuggets of their work over the year.

   
  My friend Kris was particularly happy as her book (in French) about the Templars and the Tarot in our region had been launched that morning and is a resounding success.  Click here to read more about Kris.

  I was gallantly escorted to this event by my friend Mickael Montepin (click here to see more about Mickael) and we were of like mind and matched each other glass for glass. . . . Kris and Jean-Luc drove me back to Couiza and in the morning I found two pictures on my computer, I have no idea who took them or how they got there!

   
  It must have been one of Kris's friends, because the lady on the left is Chantal, a close friend of Kris . . . .