On Wednesday we went to the extremely beautiful French village, Rocamadour in the department of Lot, it is magnificent. Built into the side of the hill overlooking a valley, the village consists of a chateau on the top level, a cathedral on the middle level. Then a village street with shops, restaurants and homes on the lower level. The motorhome car park is at the top and there’s a lift to take you to the middle level and another to take you to the lower level. Of course we didn’t take the lifts…

We took the lifts. Down and up. (It was a very hot day.) There’s a story that Saint Amadour (meaning amateur) built a hermitage here way back in the day. It turned into a popular place of pilgrimage and pilgrims still come here today. On the village street level there’s at least three village gates, that we saw. We also saw a deer resting in the shade way down at the foot of a private stairway into the valley.

Once we were down on the village street level we picked a shady spot for our regular morning coffee and watched the people go by.

Afterwards it didn’t take long to walk along the one street in the village looking at the shops and it was time to go back up to the car park.

The lifts are built into the stone of the hill and as soon as you go through the entrance the temperature goes way down. Worth the €6 each for that alone. The lower lift is like any lift but the upper one is more of an escalator with a car on it, kinda… a picture might help.

After forgetting to get pictures of the outside of our first beautiful village with the tunnel and light shafts under the walls (Navarrenx) I was delighted to discover there was place you could walk to on the top level to see the village in it’s entirety and at it’s best. So in the afternoon I headed off there. Did I mention it was a very hot day…? I was determined to get the view for you.

If the legend is to be believed people have been coming to visit this village for over a thousand years, well before it got on the most beautiful villages of France list. I’m busy working on my new copyrighted (not to scale or accurate) Map with all the villages we have visited… I’ll be sharing it with you before we get home.