Rocamadour

France Road Trip: Rocamadour

Hotel Entrepreneurs in Rocamadour

We arrived at Rocamadour in the middle of a torrential rainstorm and went straight to our hotel room and hid for a while. The hotel, Relais Amadourien, had a Scandinavian flair to it and was owned by a young couple who had traveled and worked in five-star hotels in Paris and other large centers.

As they now had young children they were seeking a different lifestyle and had purchased not one but two hotels in his hometown, population 500. The tourist traffic from April 1st to November 1st triples the population by mid-summer.

They each ran one of the hotels and it looked like they did everything from check-in and greeting guests to reservations, setting up the breakfast buffet to cleaning the rooms, at least in the shoulder season.

Their 2 and a half and 5-year-old daughters are enrolled in a small school with 2 teachers and 30 kids aged 3 to 15. It is interesting to chat with the locals and to see the choices others make to get life to add up.

Exquisite French Dinner

Feeling like a light dinner and wanting to stay out of the rain, we settle on an exquisite French blend of oatmeal with lukewarm milk. A couple of long days on the road is taking their toll and we have an early night.

We supported the enthusiastic young hotel owners and opted for the buffet breakfast at the hotel. It was a good breakfast and I persuaded Di we need to set money aside for an industrial espresso machine like the one we have seen here and in Prague. You could get a very serious coffee addiction with one of those.

Sanctuary of Rocamadour

The village of Rocamadour and the sanctuary are another impressive display of 12th-century medieval engineering with the Dordogne River below in the Alzou Canyon. We are in awe over the willpower it must have taken to build these towns, and so long ago.

We ventured down the Chemin de Croix, a zig-zag path, and marveled once again at how few tourists there are. A very tranquil feeling set in as the church bells started ringing. The combination of sight and sound gets me every time.

A Place of Miracles

Rocamadour, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is another pilgrimage site with the Chapelle Notre Dame, with its Black Madonna statue, and some 126 miracles are reported to have taken place here.

A quasi miracle happened on this day as we successfully hiked back up the Grand Escalier staircase and saved the 6€ elevator fee. We are sorry to admit we have lost most of the training from our hiking guru Sharon in Hong Kong.

It was a driving day so after our morning excursion through Rocamadour, we hopped in the Citroën and headed northwest toward our next destination, Ambroise. I want to recognize and thank Patrice, Dominique, and Ross for their suggestions on our route and what to see. Awesome recommendations thus far.

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The photos in this article are made using a Fujifilm X-T1. Lenses: XF 14mm f/2.8 R - XF 23mm f/1.4 R - XF 35mm f/2 R WR (links to my camera and lens reviews). Editing was done with Lightroom and I have made use of Fujifilm’s film simulations in some of the photos.

Morten Byskov