May 18, 2023
Day 31 - Day Ride From Rocamadour to Gouffre de Padirac
Almost the Griswolds
We owe this day to fellow CB’er Jacquie Gaudet. On her May 2019 French Fling trip, after leaving Rocamadour, she and her husband Al stopped off at this funny sounding place, Gouffre de Padirac. Her pictures and descriptions of the place were ‘super cool’, and ideal fit for our trip moto ‘That’s cool”, so we planned a nice short figure eight loop ride to see this site.
As mentioned in yesterday’s write up, when we planned this several months ago, and right up until the last 48 hours, we were completely unaware that today, a Thursday, was a national holiday. Jacquie made no mention of booking tickets in advance, nor of there being large crowds. From my reading of her write up it almost seemed like they were just riding past and decided to stop in. Anyway, when it dawned on us that this was a national holiday, and that we knew we were going to this place, we figured we should try to pre book tickets.
The first clue that this was going to be a busy place was that the first tickets we could get were at 11:45 and there were only 22 left for that time. We secured these, and then promptly forgot about them and got on with the rest of our activities for that day.
Fast forward to today. We reconfirmed when our booking was and then decided we could have a bit of a lazy morning and then a nice leisurely ride out. The ride itself was wonderful. We left Rocamadour around 9:45, and the place was still relatively quiet but we could see that starting to change fast. The climb out of the steep river canyon was pretty quick and easy on an unloaded bike and then we were cruising on our beloved deserted D roads for the nice one hour ride to Padirac.
When we got the village of Padirac, which is about a km away from the chasm/caves, things started to change. We were now on a larger D road (with painted lines and hence more traffic), there were several campgrounds around (all full) and most of them had large ‘fun park’ playgrounds or mini golf set ups, and the crowds of people were starting to build.
Then we saw the parking and other facilities for Gouffre de Padirac …. And the line of people stretched out to get it. Our first response was horror! What have we got ourselves into? We slowly ventured into the throng of people and saw t it was being managed by the ‘park’ staff quite well, and that the lines of people were organized by the ‘15 minute’ time window associated with your booking. One of the helpful staff showed us where the bike parking was and gave us the general run of how things worked.
With that in hand and about 40 minutes until our allotted time, we got ourselves organized for the ‘tour’ and joined our assigned queue. To be honest, we were considering bailing on this venture as we’ve become accustomed to having no crowds around, but we figured that all of these people were here for a reason …. And it finally hit us that there were this many people because it was Accession day and the start of effectively a 5 day long weekend …. And we were in an area of France that is one of the most popular places to visit, so we decided to suck it up and keep going.
Short finale, to this long build up. This place is amazing and if you get the chance you should visit it (try on a weekday in early May, when there isn’t a national holiday, like Jacquie did, but even if you pull a classic Griswold family move like we did, hey we did buy tickets before hand though, it is still worth it).
There were a lot of people, and at times it was crowded, but the overall crowd management was excellent, and we didn’t feel pressured to keep moving. The guidelines say you’ll spend about 1 1/2 hours in the caves, we spent 2.
You first decent about 60 meters down into a very large sink hole that lined with ferns and dripping water … cool! You then proceed further down into a cave opening …. Very cool, and it keeps getting better. A few ‘boardwalks’ and additional stairs and you are now by an underground stream … Even cooler, and then you get on these 10 person boats that ferry you deeper into into the caves and some larger caverns. Much lager. Now this is getting really , really cool. After about a 500 m board ride, you get off and then go into a really large cavern system.
Mindblowing!
Pic’s to follow to show what words can’t adequately describe. I have some of the exact pictures that Jacquie does (but hers are much better) as there are certain highlight features, but even though I had seen her pictures before, and after looking at what I took (and they are very good), they only capture a tiny amount of what the entire experience was / is. This is a place that definitely has to been seen live and in person.
Kirsten had not seen Jacquie write up of her day, nor did she do any research on this place. She went in blind, and in the parking lot was having the same thoughts I was …. Is this really worth it. Her reaction to seeing it was the same as mine. Far more than amazing!
Have a look at some of the pics that follow, and try to remember you are only getting a very small insight of the whole experience from these pictures.
Our ride back to Rocamadour was equally good as our ride out was … until we actually hit the town. We thought Padirac was crowded! This was wall to wall people and vehicles, with no potential of an amazing natural wonder to take in … what a mass of people wandering in an old cool village setting buying souvenirs, eating gelato and drinking beers and Aperol.
Aaahgggg!
We made a booking for dinner at the very nice Hotel Bellevue that was at the top of the ridge in the l’Hospitalet section of Rocamadour … once again a rare moment of thinking ahead for us … and had a very good dinner away from most of the throngs. Over dinner we discussed again how this trip is having much more of a ‘natural world’ flavour to it, and how much we are appreciating that (even the very controlled Gouffre de Padirac experience is still all about the natural world … a concealed ‘in the earth gorge’). That put a cap on a pretty unique and wonderful day.
As a side note, if anyone is planning on staying at Rocamadour, we’d recommend staying up on the ridge in the l’Hospitalet area (but still come into the town the way we did from the south). It’s far less crowded and there is a better choice of hotels there, the views of the chapels and castles are great, and it’s a short walk ‘down’ to see them.
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SOTD - Into the Mystic by Van Morrison
‘..and together we will flow into the mystic’ … it might sound trite, but that’s how we felt as the small boats floated us towards the grand hall and into a magical, mystic other world. No other words to describe it.
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1 year ago
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Today's ride: 37 km (23 miles)
Total: 1,342 km (833 miles)
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1 year ago
1 year ago
FWIW, I subscribe to a public holiday calendar for my destination region when I'm planning a trip. We still got caught by Liberation Day in Sicily, though, as there were so many entries on the calendar for that day that we didn't see it.
1 year ago
1 year ago
Alternatively, go to calendarlabs.com-->country holidays-->choose your country-->add to calendar and choose the version that suits.
1 year ago