Walking the Camino de Santiago
The town of Rocamadour is carved out of the great limestone cliffs overlooking the Alzou valley. And where there’s limestone, there’s fossils! You can see them most clearly in the many steep staircases, carved out of the living rock. It’s utterly delightful, particularly these shells which, if you squint, resemble those of Saint James. Date: 01 September 2023 Place: Rocamadour, […]
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This is the entrance to the church of Notre Dame de Rocamadour. Within is the little statue known as the Black Madonna – more on that in coming days. The first small chapel was built into the cliff here in 1105. We don’t know exactly when the Black Madonna made her first appearance, but the first miracle attributed to her […]
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Apologies! I was ill yesterday, but I’m feeling a little better today – so here’s yesterday’s photo. From the medieval town, there are more stairs upwards, ever upwards, to the shrine churches. There are several here, and in the coming days, we’ll explore them. Meanwhile, you can get a pretty good idea of just how steep these steps are by […]
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It’s difficult to capture the sheer otherworldliness of Rocamadour in photographs. This is a view looking up from the main medieval street of the town. There are additional levels of the town clinging to the cliffs above. I can’t even imagine what it took to build this. Time to find another set of stairs! Date: 01 September 2023 Place: Rocamadour, […]
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The main street of Rocamadour is very touristy during the day, though in the evening, after the tourists left, it was actually quite charming. This is one of the most visited Catholic shrines in France, with over a million visitors per year. Not bad for a place with a population of about 600. Date: 01 September 2023 Place: Rocamadour, Lot […]
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The town and shrines of Rocamadour are built into the side of a cliff. This stair is the main access to the old medieval town. It is just the first of many such stairs I will climb today. I took this photo at about 11:20 AM. It was very hot, as you can probably surmise by the colour of the […]
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The Alzou Gorge trail ended in a parking lot, which was something of an anticlimax. And then, as I walked into the field beyond, I caught my first view of Rocamadour. It was like something straight out of Tolkien – something of a theme today. It didn’t look possible: a town carved out of and built into a sheer cliff. […]
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There are not just one, but four ruins in the Alzou Gorge on the way to Rocamadour. All were mills, and each ruin is progressively less impressive than the previous. I think this is the second one. By the time you get to the fourth, you’d completely miss it if there wasn’t a sign. Anyway, it seems a perfect image […]
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Once through the ruins of the Moulin de Tournefeuille, you can see the shape of the Camino canyon route. This is the Alzou Gorge, carved out over long millennia by the river of the same name. The canyon is so narrow and deep that I completely lost my GPS service through most of it. This is one of the most […]
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Dominique and I walked through the ruins of the Moulin de Tournefeuille. This old mill site (and probable defensive work) straddles the narrow canyon to Rocamadour. It’s the first of a series of mills on the canyon river, but it’s by far the most spectacular. It was a strange feeling to be walking down these stone stairs down to the […]
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