Rocmadour

After weeks of being spoilt for choice, falling upon fountains at every turn, I haven't seen one for two days. I have been actively looking in all the fountain-ish places: in squares, outside churches, by markets, at ends of roads, next to war memorials, behind city walls, in the middle of nowhere, with no success.

I set off today to visit Rocmadour. It has an evocative name, of dark vaulted spaces and troubadours in love, and perhaps I saw a picture of it in a 'Beautiful Villages in France' sort of book. I have avoided it in the past as I thought it would be riddled with tourists. However, a few weeks ago, I met a Milanese biker following the Santiago de Compostela route on his Aprillia or Ducati or maybe it was a BMW, and he was heading there. It is unusual to meet fellow pilgrims on a motorbike, however he was going west and I was aiming southeast.

Being reasonably close by I thought I'd follow in his footsteps and maybe, who knows, we could exchange impressions by email. I entered via the original route through the gate just as millions, including Saint Louis, Jean Le Bel and a few other French kings with their wives or mothers, had done for a thousand years. I went down the cobbles, through the various portals and up and up into the sky.  210 steps they told us it was, so it's not only me who counts the steps to lofty churches. Partially built and carved and partially hewn into the living rock, it was undoubtedly an impressive feat of engineering.

The Chapel of the Black Madonna, with its written in stone list of documented nautical miracles since the twelfth century, was today a busy thoroughfare of snap shotters, candle lighters, builders with an angle grinder and hot bored children.

  Throngs eddied their way up or down the road. Ice cream sellers stood ready with their stainless steel scoops, babies cried, old men puffed and wheezed, young lovers kissed and shared a cigarette and the pring-prang of digital cameras danced in the air.

Everyone was looking for something : God, earrings, text messages, 0.5 euro for the toilets, gift boxes of foie gras. Or a fountain. How did the pilgrims manage without this essential commodity? I left feeling sad and empty, and desperately thirsty, like an unwelcome guest.

Le-Puy-en-Valey

               

I am uncomfortably aware that I have placed the Vallee des Merveilles in a bad light. I am not writing the food and accommodation section for the Lonely Planet. My experience there goes beyond the superficialities of a blog. Being alone within the enormity of these unimaginably ancient elements : sky and rock, cannot be expressed in words alone.

Around 3000 b.c. pastoralists devoted to the " 'divine primordial couple' : the Earth goddess who would be impregnated by the god Taurus, master of the storm and dispenser of fertilising rain", engraved over 40,000 pictograms on the rocks strewn across the valley by glaciers and other natural forces. The images are mostly horned shapes or schematic symbols of fields, irrigation, weather. And some surprisingly unique images. I wanted to find a specific engraving and with much great good fortune, I did.




                                           St. Michel's Church of Aiguilhe, Le-Puy-en -Valey

Now I am 333 miles northwest, taking tea in my tent at the municipal campsite situated under the remains of a volcanic eruption upon which St. Michel's church was built. The original building dates from 960, after its creator, Bishop Godescalc, was the first Frenchman to take the pilgrims' route to Compostela. After a century or so, it had to be enlarged to accommodate all the pilgrims that were making their way to Le Puy.

All night I heard its bells ring out the hours twice, in case you missed the first call, and I am so pleased. I returned to Le-Puy-en-Valey for two reasons: to visit this church and to have another artisan-made ice cream from the confisserie of Stephane Lafaure.

The interior of the church felt like it was built as a loose spiral of diminutive arches. The capitals on the columns were just over head height. The warm smell of a hundred burning candles wrapped around me at the door. This quality of smell I have only experienced once before. It was in a minuscule side chapel dedicated to those with cancer at San Juan Capistrano, an "old"18th century  Spanish mission church in California.

Tourists slightly grudgingly paid their three euros, climbed the hundreds of steps and wandered in with their camera. Initially dazed by the altitude and sudden plunge into the dark interior, they were immediately transformed into humble, truth seeking pilgrims. Such was the power of the place.
                                    
I stopped again at the ticket kiosk and bought a few little crucifixes made from different coloured stones and made my way to Stephan Lafaure. As I was refilling my water bottle at the Fountain of the Choristers, a monk with a large rucksack and bulging computer bag puffed his way up the cobbles. I couldn't stop myself from running after him. I have seen pilgrims in track suits or summer dresses, in jeans, on bicycles, motorbikes, but not a real monk in a brown habit and dusty sandals. I held out my hand and asked him to bless the little pile of crosses. He asked my name and in Spanish made a blessing for me.

He sighed and pulled out his photo album and explained that he worked with the poor in Peru. He flipped through pages of smiling people: eating, playing and building a life.
Then he opened another book and showed me the stamps he got from Lourdes and a few other churches along the Santiago route. He said was after the stamp from the cathedral in Le Puy.
 "Marvellous", I said.  "What is your name?"
"Frere Thiabauld "
"How are your feet?"
"Painful".

I wanted to tell him that I would pray for his feet but I couldn't think of the right words, so I set off for my ice cream and immediately regretted that I hadn't invited him to come with me. He told me that he had been traveling by autostop when he was running out of time, so an ice cream donation would have fitted into that category of luxury.

After having decided that I'd splash out and have two scoops after all, I turned the corner to discover the blinds were drawn down.
Of course, it is Sunday, and the shop was shut.