As I was passing through Lourdes en route to Cauterets, a town a little further along the Vision’s trigger? road to the Pyrenees, out of curiosity I went to see the cave where Bernadette Soubirous is supposed to have had her vision, and I spotted some walking sticks hanging on a wire. The faithful were expected to think that their owners had thrown the sticks away after being cured.

I took this photograph of the sticks hanging near the entrance to the cave and back in England I showed it to a pious friend of mine, who immediately saw the figure of a female form marked out by the different colours on the rock face. I had to agree with her that this figure could have been what triggered Bernadette’s vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in February 1858.

Don Warren Liverpool, Merseyside