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EURO BOOK TREK – 3rd Leg

TOULOUSE TO LOURDES & BIELSA – Stars, Sacred Sites & a Road Between Worlds

Jun 23, 2025

Some chapters unfold like stories. Others feel like visions. This leg of the Euro Book Trek was a bit of both.

From the vibrant streets of Toulouse to the mountain shadows of Bielsa, this stretch was soaked in the surreal, the sacred, and the speculative. Along with my wife Sara and my son Harrison, I went to stay with my old friend Chris Rosings, former editor of OVNIS — the popular French UFO magazine that once featured my son and I years ago. Chris is one of the most curious, sharp-minded people I know — and she was keen to show us the sights of her home town and surounding area. This journey was, in many ways, an opportunity for Chris and Harry to continue the conversation they started when he was only 14, about the many unexplained mysteries of Europe

📍 Places Visited

Toulouse: A beautiful, warm city of art, fashion, and science — ancient streets humming with creative enterprises. While Chris showed Sara and Harrison around town, I visited Cité de l’Espace, a huge space-themed discovery park. Toulouse is known as the European Capital of Space, home to Airbus — and a very big rocket.

Here, inspiration for sci-fi writing was everywhere. Earth observation, planetary resilience, and space-enabled conservation projects all echoed my character Rowan’s work in Salt & Seeds — mapping the climate-battered terrain of a future Earth from above. The VEGA rocket model was also on display, and I couldn’t help thinking that my character Vega would’ve loved seeing it. I felt proud to still be working in the space sector on Earth preservation initiatives, and treated myself to a new ESA patch.

This city makes you think forward. After so many reflections on memory and war in Normandy, Toulouse felt like standing on a launchpad — not just for rockets, but for imagination.

Later that day, I joined Chris and my family in the city centre for excellent food and a tour of the wonderful bookshops and galleries. A great example is The Bookshop — with a well-curated stock of English language books, and now a signed copy of Salt & Seeds on its shelf.

Lourdes: A place of devotion, healing, and deep mystery. We stopped here with Chris on our way to the mountains. We drank from the holy spring, visited the grotto, and watched monks, nuns, and other pilgrims move like quiet currents through the sanctuaries.

Lourdes is not just about miracles — it’s also about resilience through ritual. The town has a complex relationship with flooding, having faced several devastating deluges in recent years. And yet, it rebuilds again and again, with faith and sandbags. There’s valuable experience here.

The Pyrenees & the Bielsa Pass: We crossed into Spain through the Tunnel de Bielsa, emerging into sweeping Pyrenean wilderness. The magnificent snow-capped peaks contrasted with the warm sunlit ground in the beautiful clearing where we stopped to stretch our legs. Local cows, big-belled and friendly, grazed calmly nearby with their calves — curious, not protective.

That night we had a delicious meal in Bielsa, where I left bookmarks, then drove back through winding mountain roads. A beautiful deer ran beside our car for several long moments, as if guiding us back to the border.

The road was winding and long. It felt like moving through a dream. Like the forest itself was aware of us.

🌍 Climate & Resilience Insight

Toulouse isn’t just a city of aerospace — it’s a city thinking about survival. Its research centres study not only satellites and rocketry, but also urban sustainability, water systems, and climate resilience. ESA’s Earth observation programs are already being used to monitor deforestation, ocean temperatures, and agricultural shifts — the very technologies I work with in GalacticESG, and the inspiration for what my character Rowan uses in Salt & Seeds to interpret planetary signals from orbit.

In contrast, Lourdes faces rising climate pressure with very human tools — cooperation, community, ritual. The 2013 and 2018 floods shut down pilgrimage sites and displaced residents. Now, improved flood defences and real-time monitoring protect the sacred grotto. It’s a blend of ancient belief and modern adaptation — in the face of warming air and heavier storms.

In the Pyrenees, climate change brings a different pressure: earlier snowmelt, shifting ecosystems, and wildlife migrating higher. Sacred or not, the mountains are changing too.

📚 Literary Sparks

Toulouse turned out to be more than a stop — it became a creative ignition point. Chris offered to translate Salt & Seeds into Spanish, and introduced me to a friend interested in creating a graphic novel adaptation. The story is growing — not just in space, but in form.

We also spent time exploring local bookshops and galleries. Salt & Seeds found kindred company in Toulouse — stories about possible futures, wild hope, and strange new worlds were welcomed with warmth and enthusiasm.

📘 Book Drops

Book in The Bookshop, Toulouse
Book to my dear friend Chris to pass on once she’s read it
Bookmarks in Bédéciné Bookshop, Toulouse
Bookmarks in Ombres Blanches Bookshop, Toulouse
Bookmarks in Bielsa and Lourdes information areas

🌱 Closing Thought

This leg reminded me that speculative fiction doesn’t always begin in the mind — sometimes it begins in the body, in landscape, in stories whispered in chapels or tracked in satellite orbits. It was a journey through outer space and inner signal, through pilgrimage and possibility.

Next stop: Provence to Nice — ochre cliffs, lavender dreams, resistance villages, and the ancient beauty of churches on hilltops.

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EURO BOOK TREK – 2nd Leg

(A literary and climate-themed journey through Europe, one bookshop at a time).

NORMANDY TO TOULOUSE – Memory, Resistance & Storytelling by Sea and Stone

After crossing beneath the Channel via Le Shuttle — a slightly unnerving experience for a claustrophobe — I emerged into France and rolled south along the coast to Boulogne-sur-Mer. A windswept town with echoes of ancient tides and wartime crossings, it was here that the second chapter of the Euro Book Trek truly opened.

📍 Places Visited

Boulogne-sur-Mer: France’s oldest fishing port and once the Roman capital of Gaul. Beneath its ramparts, I found a quiet book swap nestled in a side street, and placed a signed copy of Salt & Seeds there for a stranger to find. A town shaped by tides and trade, like so many of the communities my book speaks to.

Juno Beach, Courseulles-sur-Mer: This visit was deeply personal. My son’s great-grandfather came ashore here in 1944 with the Canadian army, part of the D-Day landings. To walk that same beach is an extraordinary thing — sobering, humbling, connective. Still framed in remnants of war.

War Cemetery, near Onahama Beach: The resting place of those who never made it past that first terrible day. White crosses in perfect lines. I couldn’t help thinking of the generational echoes — what they preserved, and what we must protect, as war and fascism rise again in Europe.

Book Swap in a red English Phone Box, Bernières-sur-Mer (near Juno Beach): Painted bright red and filled with paperbacks. I placed a signed copy of Salt & Seeds inside, for the many English readers around these parts.

Caen: A city scarred by WWII, but now thoughtfully rebuilt. The Caen Memorial Museum is a powerful archive of 20th-century conflict — but also peace-building. This stop gave me a chance to reflect on memory as civic duty, and the role of narrative in resisting authoritarian forgetting. Caen have real concerns about climate change and are taking preparations seriously.

Tours: A beautiful riverside city and a way-marker south, where history feels deeply woven into the streets. Known for its Renaissance architecture and commitment to heritage preservation. I didn’t stop long — but long enough to admire how this place balances old and new, tradition and transition.

Oradour-sur-Glane: A ghost village, preserved in silence. In 1944, German SS troops massacred 643 inhabitants — mostly women and children — and left the ruins as they were. Visiting here is not like walking through history. It is walking through trauma. Burned prams. Rusting cars. Church walls blackened by fire and pitted with bullet holes where people prayed for sanctuary before the end. I left no book here — only silence and a promise to remember.

Limoges: A small city, near Oradour’s shadow. Here, I found Le Bibliovore, a warm, independent bookshop where I left bookmarks and had a thoughtful chat with the bookseller about climate fiction, art, and resilience. He seemed to understand exactly what I was doing.

🌊 Climate & Resilience Insight

Normandy’s coastlines are under increasing threat from erosion and rising sea levels. The same beaches that bore guns and sacrifice now face subtler, slower battles. Local initiatives are emerging: dune restoration, floodplain buffering, and heritage-sensitive urban planning. This is the slow fight — not against invasion, but inundation. Historic bunkers and precious land are being lost to increasing storm-driven tides. Building plans have recently been shelved due to worries of faster sea level rise than anticipated.

As I moved inland, the danger shifted — not from water, but from heat and fire. The Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, including Limoges, is seeing hotter, drier summers and renewed investment in forest fire management. Community allotments, sustainable transport initiatives, and climate adaptation plans are all growing — just like the themes at the heart of Salt & Seeds.

📚 Literary Encounters

Boulogne-sur-Mer Book Swap: A handwritten sign inviting readers to take what they needed and leave what they’d loved.
Red Phone Box Book Swap, Bernières-sur-Mer: A British icon rewilded into a book refuge. I imagined a traveller finding Salt & Seeds and feeling compelled to take it with them.
Le Bibliovore, Limoges: Small, welcoming, and rich in atmosphere. I left bookmarks and talked with the bookseller about ecological literature.

🤝 People & Moments

In Normandy, I met a young man who had recently left the French army. He told me, quietly, that he felt dreadfully lonely and unsure of his next step. His friends had all stayed on or moved elsewhere. I told him he might find solace in writing — in creating characters, telling stories, giving voice to what aches. I hope he will be okay.

In Limoges, a woman asked if Salt & Seeds was a sad book. I said, “It’s honest. But it ends with growth.” She nodded. “Then it is a hopeful one.”

📘 Book Drops

Books placed at:

Boulogne-sur-Mer book swap
English phone box book swap, Bernières-sur-Mer near Juno Beach

Bookmarks placed at:

Le Bibliovore, Limoges

🌱 Closing Thought

This leg of the journey was a descent — from the cliffs of Normandy into the shadowed ruins of Oradour, and on to the flowering south. Each place reminded me that resistance isn’t only about defiance — it’s also about remembrance. It’s about how we carry pain, and how we plant something in its place.

Next stop: Toulouse — where aerospace dreams meet speculative fiction, and my old friend Chris is waiting to meet me with stories of her own.

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EURO BOOK TREK – 1st Leg

(A literary and climate-themed journey through Europe, one bookshop at a time).

First Leg of the Journey: CAMBRIDGE & ELY – Lowlands, Legacy & Literary Soil

The Euro Book Trek began not with a bang, but with the soft, persistent lapping of water under a fenland sky — and a punt ride down the river past ancient libraries. As I stood beneath the tower of Ely Cathedral, it struck me: if Salt & Seeds is a story of regeneration and resistance, then this land, once an island in marsh and sea, was the perfect place to start. Cambridgeshire and Ely exist on borrowed time, much like my home in East Yorkshire — and the world Vega inherits in my novel.

📍 Places Visited
Ely: Cathedral city built on high ground in a sea of low-lying fens. Originally an island dominated by a 7th-century monastery, reminiscent of Whitby Abbey — also 7th century. Henry VIII closed both, but Ely was quickly re-established as a cathedral, while Whitby was left to erode. Walking Ely’s sacred spaces gave me a vivid sense of what Whitby once was in its full glory.
Cambridge: An ancient seat of learning, imagination, and quiet rebellion. Home to around 100 libraries — stories stacked on stories, bricks bound to books.