July 16: I have come to understand that I am really a traveller, as opposed to a tourist. I don’t really visit the chateaux, the galleries, the cathedrals or the museums. I’m more about going from place to place; seeing what’s around the next corner. That said, there are times when I make a detour to visit specific places and I become a tourists like so many others.
This is Rocamadour. Although there remains some debate, the hermit priest Amador is reputed to have established a 
missionary near the site around 1100, and constructed a small. chapel. In time, a number of miracles were attributed to a small carving of Notre Dame, believed to have been carved by him, and the site became a pilgrimage destination and a stop on the Santiago de Compostela. A larger chapel was constructed (the largest building near the centre of the shot) and inns, and then hotels and all the other trappings of modern tourism sprang up. Today there is a small village rising in steps 120 metres up the face of a cliff and it is among the most visited sites in France. It is also crawling with tourists, so many that it is easy to lose the religious significance of the site in the carnival atmosphere that prevails.
On the other hand, there are places I visit simply because they are unlike anything I know in my daily life. This is the gorge of the Tarn river, not far from Rocamadour. Although it is truly spectacular, it’s not, in my view anyway, the most picturesque of the many canyons in France. But it is remarkable, and the road along the bottom is lots of fun on a motorcycle or in a performance car. It too is crawling with tourists, especially campers, and mobile homes are a constant menace on the road. This picture is taken from the Pointe Sublime where I sat alone for a long while and absorbed the view.
In the end perhaps it doesn’t matter whether I am a tourist or a traveller. I visit what I like and take whatever meaning I attach to heart. And that, in the end, is the most significant.