Being ill on a holiday is not something one would generally reminisce fondly about, but sometimes when illness strikes you, it can tell you a lot about the place you’re in and the people around you (writes Careena Bruen). This is my tale of extreme vomiting – and so much more! – in a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

It was a night like any other. A friend and I had stopped at a small restaurant for something to eat. It was here that I made my first mistake. I ordered fruits de mer. A word of advice here: it’s probably best not to order seafood in a mountain restaurant quite some way from the sea. My second mistake was to continue eating even after I complained that “everything just tastes a bit too salty”. I didn’t finish the dish, but I did eat beyond anything that could have been described as enjoyment.

I put this down to good manners; I didn’t want the staff to think I hated their food. In hindsight, I put it down to stupidity. All was well for a while. We went on to the bar we’d been frequenting throughout our short stay for a couple of beers and then back to the small hotel where we were staying.  Madame was still up, so we said our goodnights and went up to the room we were sharing. I fell asleep almost immediately, but the seafood was starting to work its dark arts on me: I didn’t sleep for long.

When I woke, I could hear my friend gently snoring in the next bed. I could also hear similar noises emerging from my own stomach. What followed was not pretty - suffice to say that I was rather poorly, it was the wee small hours, I was miles from home and feeling utterly miserable. By the time morning arrived, I was spent, tearful and so grateful that my friend had woken that if I’d had the strength I would have hugged her and never let her go. She was a good friend, so was rather cross that I hadn’t woken her earlier, but as I explained, what could she have done? Minor disagreement out of the way, she headed to a chemist to find some relief for me and on the way told Madame of my predicament.

Madame was a tiny angel of mercy. She came to the room to check on me, sent my friend out to enjoy what she could of the day with instructions that she herself would care for me, and so she did. I took my medication, Madame soothed my aching brow and I slept like a baby. Later on in the evening I dared to head out. We went to our local bar and our waiter, upon seeing me and having my predicament explained came back to the table with dry toast and lemonade which he explained would be good for my stomach. And he was right! The next day, shored up by goodwill and the warmth of the people around me, I hiked 1,600 metres up into the Pyrenees as though I’d never been ill at all!

The moral of my story is this: there is a small town in the Pyrenees called Cauterets, where my hotelier and the waiter in the bar I frequented were so kind, that even hideous food-poisoning became an almost pleasant memory of my stay. I was treated with such gentleness that the miles from home faded away – Madame even phoned my mother to let her know I was fine – and Cauterets was no longer one of many places I visited on my journey through the south-west of France; it is, to this day, somewhere that feels like home. I don’t recommend food-poisoning, but sometimes it is possible to find the true heart of a place when you are experiencing a touch of adversity. Cauterets is a small town with a very big heart.

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