Vercors, France - Friday, 29 August 2008

Paul and I again headed to Pont-en-Royans and then up the lower section of the bourne Gorge to visit the Choranche Show Cave, the Gournier, which is very close to the Choranche, and the Bournillon, a cave with an enormous entrance, where water levels are controlled by a hydro electric plant.

The Choranche Show Cave is definitely worth a visit and is amazingly well decorated with lots of stal and some 3/4m straws, it's very pretty.




We also had a look at the entrance to the Gournier, which looked very inviting. There were lots of boats at the entrance, ready for the journey across the initial lake.




We then decided that as we were in the area we should have a look at the Bournillon down in the bottom of the valley. The afternoon was getting rather warm as we turned off the main road onto a single-lane track heading down to the hydro-electric plant. We had to park half way down as a barrier prevented us from going further, so we walked from there - and quite a walk it was and it was baking!!!






The entrance appears to be gigantic, but when you finally start to get inside, it closes down to a passage about 10m round, with a bridge crossing it. Interesting place and again, one for another time!?






















Before leaving the relative cool of the cave, I soaked my shirt (good move) and my hat (bad move). It was definitely cooler on the walk back to the car, but although my shirt dried really quickly, my hat was still really rather damp when it got back to England the next day!!

Vercors, France - Wed-Fri 27-29 August 2008

On Wednesday morning Keith and Pete were the only takers for the trip to the Grotte de la Luire. Paul didn't fancy 200m of ladders, although he was feeling much better than the day before and I was completely seized up from the day before. Paul suggested quite an ambitious walk (it would have been ambitious if I hadn't been as stiff as a post!!) and we debated that for a while before settling for a short loop of it, which was a relief to me as I knew he'd be carrying me if we went any further. I was in pain!! As we drove past the car park where the original walk would have started, I knew that we'd made the right choice!!

We followed a valley, Coombe Claire, up to an auberge and stopped for coffee and some delicious summer fruit tart. From there we continued down the other side of the saddle (on the wrong path I suspect) to what I thought was going to be a viewpoint, but turned out to be a viewpoint with lots of trees in front of it, at which point I chucked my dolly out of the pram and Paul threatened to disown me.

We finally found a map showing some cross country ski routes and found our way back to the refuge and followed the track to the refuge back to the road and down there to where we'd left the car.

We then had a call from the boys and met them in Lans for a Coke and then went to the supermarket to buy lots of food, which we scoffed back at the apartment.

By Thursday morning I'd loosened up again and was up for some more underground exploration. Paul had a phone call soon after breakfast from a French lad who wanted to join us. As Boyd had opted not to come we had a spare place, so we agreed to pick him up from the registration area.

We then drove out to the Trou Qui Souffle, parked up and changed and walked back down to the entrance, which is just brilliant - sit on the edge of the tarmac with your legs down the hole and attach your descender!!

To cut a long story short, Keith, Pete and Tibon, the French lad, went down, I followed, heard Paul struggling with a tight bit on the entrance pitch and then heard Pete calling back to say that Keith had hurt his finger. Paul retreated back up the pitch, Keith came back with a wonky finger that I taped up for him and while the two of them left, the three of us continued. We dropped several dry pitches and did some fairly straight forward but airy traversing that Tibon didn't seem to happy with and then came to a point where the main route appeared to continue down a series of short drops, but the bottom of the rope we'd just descended had a piece of string attached to it, which led into a side passage.

For some reason Pete decided to take the side route and for some reason we followed him into a crawling muddy passage (very reminiscent of a Derbyshire crawl!) to a pitch that Pete assured me was only about 20m. He seemed to take an awfully long time to go down and then Tibon seemed to take even longer and I changed my mind about going down several times before I leant right out and saw how far away the two of them actually were at the bottom. I was very glad I hadn't bothered when Pete came prussiking back up to say that we were on the wrong route. At that point we decided to head back out, we obviously weren't going to find the through route very easily. Good fun though!!

Back on the surface, we found Paul and Keith waiting for us. We did suggest that Keith should go to hospital, but he declined and went to the first aid tent back at Speleobar. They taped his little finger to the next one, but by the end of the evening he'd taken the tape off because it was hurting more when strapped up.

Vercors, France - Mon-Tues, 25-26 August 2008,

On Monday, Paul and I drove to Pont-en-Royans at the southern, downstream end of the Bourne Gorge. Unfortunately the actual gorge was closed due to road works, but there was an alternative route that took us over the tops to Pont-en-Royans. Built on the very side of the gorge the village perches right over the river in a very dramatic setting. We stopped for coffee and then headed on to our destination, a gear shop called Expe, where Paul had agreed to collect some bolts for Ralph Johnson.
















By Tuesday morning, Keith was sporting a full-on head cold and looking and sounding more than a bit rough. We had breakfast and Keith and Pete disappeared in search of in-soles for Pete's wellies as he'd left his in England. I was ready to leave when Paul decided that he really didn't feel up to going, so I cadged a lift with Boyd. Neither of us was planning to go very far, probably as far as Puis Aldos, the last big pitch before the Great Rubble Heap, but Keith and Pete planned to go to the Hall of Thirteen, a drop of something like 500m (too far for me after two months of little or no caving).

Boyd and I arrived well before out allotted time of entry and Keith and Pete weren't far behind. We sat and ate and drank in the atmosphere before kitting up and heading underground. The 'boys' disappeared fairly quickly leaving Boyd and myself to take it a bit steadier. The Meanders, which I'd heard more than a few horror stories about, weren't as bad as I expected, I'm sure I've done worse in OFD and not clipped into a traverse line. We reached our destination in fairly good time, having made steady progress and decided that that was far enough.

In hindsight, I think we should possibly have bitten the bullet and descended that final 50m pitch and explored a little further because some of Keith's photos of the columns only a little further on are wonderful, but we headed for the surface.

Unfortunately at that point we caught up with a French group of four and then three groups coming in, one of which was Jules Barrett and Martin from the Eldon and friends. We waited while fourteen people descended and then the four French people went up - they were pretty slow and we waited over an hour and got very cold. In an effort to move quicker, we overtook them on the next big pitch, where there were two ropes, but I wonder whether we did the right thing because by the time we reached the 27m entrance pitch we were both completely knackered!!! And then we had nearly 2 miles to walk up hill back to Boyd's van.

Vercors, France - Sat-Sun, 23-24 August 2008

We travelled to Villard-de-Lans in the Vercors region of southeast France for the International Caving Conference to be held in Lans-en-Vercors, 10km up the road. As well as talks, slide shows and other conference stuff, there were a selection of local caves pre-rigged for cavers, which was our main attraction.

Paul, Keith, Pete Collins, myself, Boyd & Jenny rented two apartments on the outskirts of Villard. Paul and I arrived late afternoon on Saturday and Keith and Pete a little later. We drove into Lans to pick up our registration cards and check out the Speleobar, an enormous marquee cum shed on the outskirts of town that housed the dining area, bars and entertainment staging.

On Sunday morning we returned to Lans to find out what the procedures were for getting a caving trip. Having put our names down to go into the Gouffre Berger on Tuesday, we decided to walk up there to check out the route.

























We drove out through Autrans and headed up onto the ridge in between the two valleys. The views were stonking and even more amazing across the valley we'd driven up from, looking across the mountain tops to Mont Blanc in the distance. It was clearly a very popular place to go for a Sunday afternoon jaunt as there were cars parked everywhere and we had a bit of fun finding a space ourselves, I nearly took the exhaust off the car as I parked.

We walked down through the woods and eventually found ourselves at the entrance. Pete, being Pete, had to go scuttling down as far as he could for a good look. It was quite odd watching groups kitting up and disappearing down the hole, knowing that our turn wouldn't come for another two days.