Rocamadour to Revel

It stays 13 degrees with 98% humidity at all times of the year down in the cave and the water being a chilly 12 degrees. This is because it is 103m below ground and insulated by the thick limestone rock. It got darker as we went further down and it became very hard to photograph. Lew had to stop and take some long exposures so we could share it with you in the gallery photographs on this website. You continue going down rock steps until you have to walk about 100m to where the boats are launched. From this point it is a guided tour and you can't take photos or videos. It was a bit of a shame really since everything is about social media these days and that's also another form of free publicity. Anyways we didn't wait for very long until there was an English speaking guide available and he loaded about 8 of us onto this small boat with beach seats. Lew and I were right up the front and I had my GoPro between my knees thinking I could secretly film. We were paddled through this narrow cave for 500m with limestone formations all around us. I put the camera on but figured it probably wouldn't pick up much since it was so dark. It was peaceful at this time of the year but we were told that in the summer months they receive 6,000 people per day. During the boat ride we were told a bit about the history of the cave and the fact that it continues much much further but is incredibly dangerous as it has lots of water caves in it and they don't know the stability of the rocks. We parked the boat up and had another guide take over for the walking part of the tour. Still we wernt allowed to use our cameras at all.

The walking tour allowed us to view parts of the limestone formations up close and the ways in which they were formed were explained to us. I told Lew we should hang at the back of the group and maybe he could get some photos when she's busy talking French to everyone else. This worked well and he was able to get some photos during the walk and so was I. There was another man doing the same thing as us and when he saw I noticed he chuckled at me in Spanish and I told him I spoke English. He came back to me and said something along the lines of "you pay for ticket you take photos!" And I nodded my head in agreement giving him the thumbs up and we both laughed. He wasn't quite as subtle as Lewis but we didn't get a telling off like someone else did. In parts of the cave there were pancake shaped limestone and you could see right up to the roof 75m above us from where the water dropped down creating this art form. Everything was very damp and cold and we made our way back into the boats to starts the journey back. 

It was a nasty day looking outside with drizzle, fog and no doubt it was cold too. I woke at 8am like clock work but left Lew to sleep in till 9.30am. Breakfast wasn't included with our room and they didn't supply any cutlery other than plastic cups. My plan was just to eat our cereal out of those instead of paying €8.73 ($14 NZD) for breakfast but Lew really wanted to have some good food as no doubt we would miss lunch as usual. We certainly made the most of breakfast and there wasn't anyone around at 10.30am when we went. The man managed to fish out some soy milk for me and brought us fresh bread. We took half of the baguette hidden in a napkin to eat for lunch and between us we both had bread, cereal and fruit. We left the room and packed everything into the car again. We have been finding this block of single nights in different places difficult since we can't really unpack and enjoy it. Leaving the car at the hotel parking we walked back down to the city to see the sanctuarys of the pilgrims and then through the church that had small areas to worship all throughout the rock face. The church had stairs down the center of it that leads onto the one main street of town. The weather was on and off with drizzle but it was still warm at about 17 degrees. I had seen a shop the night before that sold cute umbrella and I thought we need to have some in the car so a day isn't ruined by mere rain. For €10 ($16 NZD) I brought a polka dot one and Lew refused to get one for himself saying his rain jacket would be fine. The lady showed me how to use it inside the shop opening and closing it, how many years of bad luck is that?!  There wasn't much else in the township but I did buy a small bag of lavender they were selling for €1 ($1.60 NZD) to make either our clothes or the car smell nice. Since it was already midday we walked back up the steep hill to the car before heading to a famous cave called Gouffre de Padirac.

It was 30 minutes north in the wrong direction but was absolutely worth the visit. It cost us €25 ($40.70 NZD) to get in and started with a walk down about 300 steps to descend into the chasm. It was similar to one that we had been in near Tata beach but in a far larger scale. It's actually privately owned by an associate of the man who discovered the cave and the women lives in Paris. The chasm where you enter through was formed about 10,000 years ago when the "roof" of an underground river collapsed.

Despite there being a series of elevators to get you back up the top we decided that we would prefer to walk. I gave Lew the option of taking the elevator since he has his large bag but I felt I needed the exercise. It was rather a long way back up and you certainly worked up a sweat climbing 300 stairs. Its times like these I wonder how we climbed Mount Rinjani in Lombok, Indonesia where we had to climb uphill the entire day to 2700m! My one main goal was to race the people who also came out of our boat and were taking the elevators. We bet them easily 😜. Returning to the car we brought out our baguettes we brought with us from breakfast and the other items we were carrying to make a sandwich on the picnic table behind our car. Once we were sufficiently full we started our 2.5 hour journey to Revel where we were staying for the night. It wasn't anywhere exciting we planned to go but a stop to break up the long drive to Barcelona. Returning to the car we brought out our baguettes we brought with us from breakfast and the other items we were carrying to make a sandwich on the park bench behind our car. Once we were sufficiently full we started our 2.5 hour journey to Revel where we were staying for the night. It wasn't anywhere exciting we planned to go but a stop to break up the long drive to Barcelona. 

We had a wee way to go and you could chose to take the Autoroute or not but by taking it this cut off an entire hour on the journey. We didn't have to pay for the last one we used so we weren't sure if that was the case for this one either. But as we were coming into the motorway we reached a toll booth where they made you take a ticket like your going into a carpark. We drove for an hour on this motorway and it was Lews first time getting to drive the 130km/hr speed limit which he thought was much to fast for our small car. He wished he was driving something a bit larger and much cooler. After awhile we came across an unmanned toll booth where you had to put the ticket in and pay and we were surprised it cost us €8.50 ($14 NZD) !!! I feel like I maybe would have driven an extra hour not to have to pay that amount. A short while after we came across yet another toll booth where we had to take another ticket. I did notice it says how much the tolls will cost but Lew didn't seem to read it before we went through! Luckily this second one was €3.40 ($5.50 NZD) which was a bit more affordable. I decided to search online on a website called "Via michelin" which tells you all the tolls and it said for the route we were taking it would be €13.40 ($21.80 NZD) worth of tolls so we knew there was another one coming. Sure enough we were charged in a third toll of €1.50 ($2.40 NZD) only to take one of the first few exits off the motorways which was frustrating! Some of the signage on these roads are very weird and we have no idea what it could be. Just after we exited there was one that Lew thought could have meant no Autoroutes but I thought it looked more like no drones or autobots? We will never know! The city of Revel seemed rather small but still big enough to have a hypermarket. We pulled up in front of the Airbnb we were staying at and waited for about 15 minutes before anyone came down to let us in. In fact we were tempted to go to the supermarket and come back it took that long. But the lovely women let us in and showed us around. There was some slight miscommunication about towels and she was miming it to us but we were a bit confused. In the end I had to put it into my phone and get it to speak to her and it was towels indeed she was speaking of! We were very close to having to drip dry! Once we moved all our stuff in and I checked out the kitchen equipment we drove two minutes to the supermarket. We were a bit quicker at finding what we wanted and Lew had suggested spaghetti bolognese for dinner. That was easy as I still had left overs from vegetarian pasta night! Coming home we cracked our new bottle of wine with dinner and Lew caught up with his YouTube videos since he drove us all the way today. Dinner was a success and we felt full! Tomorrow we head to Barcelona in Spain!! 😁