Godfried van Loo

Once upon a time… Founded in 910 by William I, Count of Auvergne, run by Abbot Berno and under the immediate authority of Pope Sergius III. Back then, everything went well. The power of Cluny soon went from a small abbey in France all the way from Scotland, Germany to Italy. But the decline went all to soon as well. Financial problems in the 12th century, further decline and the French Revolution, all that remained was sold in 1798 for 2,140,000 francs.

Visiting Cluny only makes you guess how times used to be…
A perfect story for a movie.

Montcabrier (near Cahors) is a very small french town in the département Lot. Hills, a creek (the Thèze), castles (like Bonaguil) and trees. We visited the Festival de théâtre au château de Bonaguil at night. “Le timide aux Palais” was the name of the show on Tuesday night at the castle. A friendly, funny and nice performance.

Starting a very nice vacation with my girlfriend Imke in Etratat, July 31 we were staring at the weird Cirque de Navacelles. The Cirque de Navacelles is large cirque landform, located towards the southern edge of the Massif Central mountain range in France. We used TomTom to bring us there… Not a very smart thing. The extremely dry landscape and hardly any sign of live, doesn’t make it a comfortable journey… the small “white roads” of TomTom were not as easy as he thought they were (maximum speed was 80 km/hour but that is not easy to get).