Via Podiensis: Reflecting in Rocamadour

We sang vespers with the sisters last night in Gramat. I have prayed Vespers frequently in both English and Latin (and more usually, a combination of the two), but this is only the second time I’ve prayed them in French. 

This is the mother house of their order, and the sisters here were few in number and gray haired. This is in stark contrast to the photos from their convents and missions and places as far afield as central Africa, Brazil, and Vietnam. In those photos, the sisters are all very young indeed. Perhaps they come back to the mother house when they retire?

After our communal dinner, several of us made our way to the convent church. A very lovely Vietnamese sister opened the doors for us.

And once there, we sang. Ávila and I sang the Salve Regina, and Bruno sang excerpts from a Mass by Brahms. In my own croaking way, I chanted the opening versicle and response of the divine office.

It was a beautiful moment, the kind you sometimes get on pilgrimage.

This morning, I couldn’t find where breakfast was laid out for us, and I wandered around the large convent complex for about 20 minutes before running into Ávila and Valentina. Together, we found it. I ended up not leaving until almost 8 o’clock. I left with Dominique, and finding the Camino proved to be a bit of a challenge.

We found it near a large cemetery, which definitely put a different sort of spin on the morning walk. The route, at least from where we started, bypassed the center of the town entirely.

Today was a half-day walk into the great Marian shrine of Rocamadour. I don’t know if it was the weird morning start, or the fact that I knew it was going to be a short day, but I was definitely not moving with my normal morning alacrity. It was a cool and clear morning, but the air felt heavy with humidity.

As we left the village, asphalt turned to gravel road, and we were on our way!

Within minutes, we were out amongst the meadows and flocks of sheep. We crossed an entirely dry stream bed over a little stone bridge, and then it was back to the usual terrain of the past few days: alternating field and forest, asphalt, gravel, and dirt.

As usual in the mornings, I found myself walking alone, deep within the thoughts that crowd around you in moments of solitude. I also cleared the path of any number of spiderwebs to the benefit of those behind me, generally using my face.

I was taking off my long sleeves when Dominique caught up with me. We walked and talked together for a little while. She was originally from Paris, but retired to Brittany and now spends months of the year walking the various Camino paths and trails in France.

Rocamadour is the end of the line for several of the pilgrims I’ve been walking with these past weeks, in particular Paul and Ávila. In a conversation yesterday, Ávila indicated that she had to get back to her job in Paris on Monday morning. It seems like a lot of the French pilgrims that I’ve met live in Paris, and I asked her about it. She shrugged. “Paris is crowded. Around 20% of all of France lives there.”

Some, like me, will continue on. Bruno is walking to Finisterra. And as for Dominique, who knows what paths she will take? Not even herself, I suspect. Somewhere to the west.

Dominique ran ahead of me during a rocky downhill scramble. I crossed over another stone bridge over a dry riverbed far below.

For a while, the Camino ran through woods between a looming stone cliff on the right and a steep drop to the dry river to the left. There was a wildness to the beauty, perhaps marred only by the smooth gravel path upon which I walked.

I caught up with Dominique at the ruins of Moulin du Saut, the first of five medieval mills in this narrow valley. It is an absolutely magnificent structure, almost a fortress, that spans the entire canyon, and I can’t imagine how they built it. It really is a very narrow canyon that we’re walking up at this point, with very tall cliffs on either side of the river. The first mill literally spans from cliff to cliff.

Upon leaving the ruins, the Camino climbs steeply up a narrow dirt path, with wooden and stone steps at the steepest parts.

I later found out that the walls of the canyon are so sheer, and it is so deep, that I lost my GPS signal for most of it, which means the tracking video for today is not going to reflect reality very much.

Eventually, the canyon widened out, and the Camino became a downhill dirt path through the forest once again. Parts are steep enough that there are wooden steps set into the path. It’s seriously hard on the knees.

The path reached the valley floor and the dry riverbed. It was a lot flatter after that! 

The next set of ruins was considerably less impressive than the first, and the Camino ran beside them rather than through them. It must have been an impressive building in its heyday, and the entirety of the river is channeled through a narrow canal-like structure through the ruins. This was Moulin de Tournefeuille. 

The path continued. And then it’s sort of petered out. After being lost for a moment, and finding Dominique in the same position, we eventually crossed the river and refound the path climbing steeply up to the cliffside, not once but twice. This river must have a lot of white water when it’s actually flowing. I’m not sure how you make the crossing during those times.

We passed the next ruined mill on our right, and it was small and covered in moss with trees growing through it. I almost missed it as I walked past. This was Moulin de la Mouline.

And then I came upon a fourth set of ruins, which proved to be Moulin de Sirogne. This was a series of scattered buildings along the trail.

The ruins of the final mill I missed entirely.

I soon left the forest, but not in the canyon. Little lizards scattered across the path as I walked. It had grown very warm indeed: there were no clouds in the sky and the sun beat down. Dominique was somewhere far ahead.

As I was trying to decide whether or not to break out the umbrella for the first time in a week, the tree cover returned. There was still dappled sunlight on the road ahead of me, but it felt like the temperature dropped 10°.

It was somewhere along the stretch that, for the fourth time in ten years, I began to write my Camino novel.

The Way continued to run in and out of tree cover for kilometers. I drank a lot of water, but in the end it didn’t seem worth it to put up the umbrella. All around me, the cliffs towered above the canyon, though now it was quite broad, and the river was lost to a grassy wetland below me to the left.

And then, at about 11 in the morning, the canyon widened out further and I passed a large parking lot. I could see Dominique in the distance ahead of me. 

And then I passed the trees and saw it. Rocamadour took my breath away.

Rocamadour looks like something out of Tolkien’s works, a great religious citadel built into and atop a vast cliff side. It does not seem real. I was so taken aback, that I briefly lost the Way.

Slowly, I climbed stairs up into the medieval city.

Once there, I arbitrarily turned right and wandered amidst the throngs of tourists. After Mont Saint-Michel and Notre Dame de Paris, Rocamadour is the third most visited religious site in France. 

I reached the end of the street, at the gate leading into the town, and I turned around.

There is an elevator up to the sanctuaries, but after all of this walking of course I took the stairs.

The steps are limestone, and in them you can see shells and trilobites. 

Halfway up the cliff, I came to the sanctuary of Notre Dame de Rocamadour. More limestone stairs. I visited a number of the chapels, and I finally arrived in the church of the Black Madonna perhaps ten minutes before noon. 

It is a glorious place, Gothic throughout, superbly appointed and decorated with nobility and beauty. There are memorials here of the various miracles ascribed to Our Lady of Rocamadour, particularly those of sailors in danger of shipwreck. A bell without a rope hangs high overhead in the church. It is said that it spontaneously rings when such a miracle occurs. It last rang in 1617. 

I sat in prayer, but my rosary was interrupted by a Mass. It was absolutely beautiful, led by a young priest and a single server, along with a lector and a two-person choir with beautiful voices. 

I understood barely a word – not even the readings, as it was a votive Mass, and I had no idea what readings were being used. And yet! And yet it was one of the most beautiful and moving Masses I have been to. You could feel the angels joining in the Sanctus – or perhaps it was we who were joining them – and during the Canon, it was as though I was kneeling at the foot of the Cross. 

Afterwards, I just kind of sat there in stunned silence for maybe half an hour. 

Finally, though, it was time for me to see if I could find my friends, or my gîte, or maybe even an Orangina. 

I stumbled into the Basilica itself, with its organ in the shape of a great ship and its quasi-Romanesque sanctuary featuring a modern stained glass window of the Good Shepherd.

I descended back to the medieval city to see what I could find. After consulting with the tourism office, it was back up the stairs most of the way to the sanctuary and then, hang a left instead of hanging a right into the churches.

I found it, and it’s lovely. The sisters are so kind. And somehow, I still made it here before Bruno, Ávila, Valentina, and Paul, my roommates of last night.

Date: 01 September 2023

Place: Rocamadour

Today started: Gramat 

Today’s Photos!