Les Thermes de Lectoure

Les Thermes de Lectoure sit at 125 rue Nationale in Lectoure, a fortified hill town in the Gers whose ramparts date from the 13th, 16th and 17th centuries and which has been a stop on the Santiago pilgrim route for over a thousand years. The establishment belongs to the ValVital group, which runs a dozen French cure centres, and its medical work is built around a single therapeutic orientation: rheumatology. The operator describes the programme as aimed at spinal osteoarthritis and its consequences, osteoarthritis of the hands, hips and knees, inflammatory rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia and the after-effects of bone and joint injuries.

The water is drawn from more than a thousand metres below the town and reaches the surface at 42 °C. The operator classifies it as sulphated, chlorinated and sodic, and uses it in steam-based treatments, mud, underwater massage, plain and hydrojet baths and treatment pools. The conventional cure runs eighteen days; shorter six-day mini-cures and three-day well-being formulas are also sold, and the season for cures runs from mid-April to late November.

Alongside the medical side there is a public thermal spa, housed in a restored 18th-century residence. Its aqua-relaxation area holds one large indoor pool of warm thermal water together with a hammam, a sauna and a jacuzzi; the pool area admits visitors from age twelve, with the hammam and sauna reserved for those aged sixteen and over. The spa also runs aquagym, gentle aqua and tonic aquagym sessions on a fixed weekly timetable, and an in-house institute offers massages and face and body treatments. The four-star Collège des Doctrinaires hotel is directly connected to the baths, so guests can walk to their treatments in a bathrobe.