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!!