Vers les hauteurs

Here's a long-zoom shot of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy-en-Velay and the huge Notre-Dame de France statue that stands on a big rock behind it. We walked up to the cathedral but decided not to go up to the top of the rock to see the statue up close. The zoom lens can do that for us. Besides, we were walking around with the dog on a leash.

Different web pages about the cathedral in Le Puy say that the number of steps you have to climb to get up to it is either 102, 117, or 134. Truthfully, we drove up and parked in a lot that is not all that far downhill from the cathedral. The weather was nice on that Thursday morning, March 7, so it was a pleasant climb. It rained in the afternoon, so we were glad we had gone up there early in the day.

In this longer view, you get a better idea about the cathedral and the statue in their dramatic setting. On the left, you can see the other major "perched" monument in Le Puy. It's the Chapelle Saint-Michel d'Aiguilhe — Aiguilhe (pop. 1,500) is a separate municipality that lies north of Le Puy proper. Aiguilhe is an old or dialectal spelling of the work aiguille, which means "needle." The chapel sits on a needle of rock left over from an ancient volcano.

The photo above sort of stretched the capabilities of my little camera's zoom lens. In other words, it's "soft" or blurry. But it does show the relative positions of the statue, the cathedral, and the chapel. The "needle" is 82 meters (269 ft.) tall, and the first chapel on top of it was built in the 10th century.

Here's a long-zoom shot of the Saint-Michel chapel. For people younger than I am, I'm sure it would be interesting to climb up there to see the Romanesque chapel and amazing views of Le Puy and the surrounding landscapes. The whole urbanized area is pretty amazing for a flat-lander like me, who spent his younger years on the sandy North Carolina coast and then on the central Illinois prairie.