Rocamadour/Cahors

Nothing ever goes to plan, which is why we never wanted to make any in the first place. So, we got ready to go slowly and left later than planned. Today is my mom’s birthday so we are going to try to call home again. The phone card we purchased in Amsterdam when we arrived is supposed to work in all countries in the EU. We have not had any problems with it until now. Julie tells me that during her conversations with the phone card company, they mentioned that France is especially hard to call from with their card. We tried using the phone card at least 20 times since our arrival in France without any success. So, I regrettably could not call home. Sorry mom. Once we were off to Rocamadour it was clear sailing and nothing really exciting, except that we are now driving on extremely narrow roads again. We approached Rocamadour from the top of a cliff and had a spectacular view of the town built along the valley wall. We took the winding road down to the parking area then had to walk part way up. It was really amazing seeing the town built the way it was. It was narrow and hugging the cliff as though it was afraid of the valley itself. Back in the day, priests used to walk up the steps praying at each one on their way up to the castle. It was also tradition, that when anyone important came the people in the castle met them half way up the steps. It was a brief stop, then another long drive to Cahors. Along the way we spotted a deer in a farmer’s field but our camera wasn’t fast enough to catch Bambi. We arrived in Cahors when it was dark, so it made driving simple without any traffic. The free camp place was full when we arrived so we drove around a bit before pulling in front of the River in a pay parking spot. We didn’t pay but used the free internet connection to send an email to my mom. We didn’t know there would be internet here, but we tried anyway, we originally pulled in here to figure out where we were going to go. The campsite we know of is closed for the season (something we are running into a lot lately) and had no area for us to park. We had passed a parking lot that some trucks and cars were parked in so we decided that would be as good a place as any. Tomorrow it’s off to try some dark wine and head to Begerac – which seems to be popular for tobacco….. we hope there is more to see there than that.