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.