Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, Valcabrère and Gargas: The Cathedral on the Hill and the Painted Hands

Required Activities

• In the cathedral, go round the cloister and work out which three galleries are the Romanesque ones under their open timber roofs and which is the vaulted 14th-century north gallery, then step into the Renaissance choir inaugurated on Christmas night 1535 — a wooden church inside a stone one — and count the 66 stalls in their two rows up to the bishop's throne at the head of the epistle side

• At Valcabrère, go in through the 13th-century cemetery gate and find the two holy-water stoups just inside the door, each hollowed out of a Roman capital, then the four column-statues flanking the portal — Stephen, Just, Pasteur and Helena — with the story of the three martyrdoms carved on the capitals above their heads

• In the caves of Gargas, find the panel of hands — 231 of them, blown in red ochre or black manganese around a hand held flat on the rock, from babies' to adults' — and look at how many have fingers reduced to a single joint while the thumb is always whole, the detail that got the place its other name, the cave of the mutilated hands

• Find the organ in the avant-nef, wedged into a corner on five fluted columns where no organ normally stands, and pick out the labours of Hercules and the country scenes carved on its Renaissance case instead of saints