Imagine being a potholer in 1935 and going down a hole that everyone knew about but had never visited before because it seemed too deep. Well (pardon the pun), French spelunkerer Robert de Joly and a small team descended the hole in August 1935 and found themselves in a vast cavern covering 2.5 acres. Stalagmites and stalactites were everywhere. We went to vist these grand Grottes d’Orgnac, as they are now known, at the weekend. Rather than climbing down a hole, we walked down many steps into an immense underground cavern of great beauty. Our tour took us up and down many stairs and by the end of the tour we were 121 metres below ground. Luckily for us, at the end of the walk there was a lift to return us to ground level.
It felt amazing to be in the caverns, it was beautiful. We saw many stalagmites growing up to 11 metres high. They were all made of little platelettes, each of which took thousands of years to create. Platelettes formed because the water that created them dripped from a great height. A little pool of water sits at the top of each stalagmite and every time a drop falls, it splashes water out horizontally to form the plate. For some reason the French call them piles of crepes!
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