On a brief family holiday this summer, we stayed in the south of France at my great-aunt's house near Cordes-sur-Ciel. Cordes itself is a very old town that is raised into the sky by the huge hill that it is situated on:
(not own photo)
About a two hour drive north of here, however, is a place known as Le Gouffre de Padirac, which is simply one of the most impressive places I have visited. What is fascinating about it is that it is situated underground, accessed by either a 75 metre stairway that descends into the initial part of the cavern, or a series of lifts.
Here on the right I am taking photos of the cavern from above:
And on the left is the cavern itself, taken by myself from the bottom of it. My vertigo just about dealt with the staircase, which seemed like it would never end, and then we went into the tunnel that extends for quite a way alongside an underground river, until you reach a section where you can only continue further by boat. There were lots of signs up prohibiting photography in here, but I assumed that it was flash photography that they had a problem with, so I switched my flash off. Unfortunately, a lot of my photos are quite blurry as a result, but you can just about make out what some of them are of. Each boat took about 10 or so people, and we were slowly pushed towards the next section, where we alighted and were given a tour around the caverns. Sadly, this was in French. It would have been nice to understand the no-doubt interesting facts that we were being given about the various caverns and their features, but instead I can only imagine what we were told. In some of the caverns, we climbed high, on stone steps, and although there were railings, I still - naturally - got the sense that I could very easily fall at any moment. Many parts of these caverns seemed to me like a combination of Gringotts Bank in the Harry Potter series (the passageway sections of the bank, that is, not the marble entrance to it), and the Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings, except of course, they are naturally formed. I don't know to what extent there has been human interference in there, in the sense of making it safe and accessible for the public to navigate around, but certainly doesn't look like much of it has been altered by man.
Apparently this is not the only underground place like this in France, but it is certainly the most-visited one in the country, and I believe it is one of the largest too, in terms of how far it spreads. To think that all of this is located underneath some fields is just amazing, especially if you consider that nobody would have any idea that there are people walking some 100 metres below them, if it weren't for the huge gaping hole on the surface that leads down into the complex of caverns.
And on the left is the cavern itself, taken by myself from the bottom of it. My vertigo just about dealt with the staircase, which seemed like it would never end, and then we went into the tunnel that extends for quite a way alongside an underground river, until you reach a section where you can only continue further by boat. There were lots of signs up prohibiting photography in here, but I assumed that it was flash photography that they had a problem with, so I switched my flash off. Unfortunately, a lot of my photos are quite blurry as a result, but you can just about make out what some of them are of. Each boat took about 10 or so people, and we were slowly pushed towards the next section, where we alighted and were given a tour around the caverns. Sadly, this was in French. It would have been nice to understand the no-doubt interesting facts that we were being given about the various caverns and their features, but instead I can only imagine what we were told. In some of the caverns, we climbed high, on stone steps, and although there were railings, I still - naturally - got the sense that I could very easily fall at any moment. Many parts of these caverns seemed to me like a combination of Gringotts Bank in the Harry Potter series (the passageway sections of the bank, that is, not the marble entrance to it), and the Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings, except of course, they are naturally formed. I don't know to what extent there has been human interference in there, in the sense of making it safe and accessible for the public to navigate around, but certainly doesn't look like much of it has been altered by man.
Apparently this is not the only underground place like this in France, but it is certainly the most-visited one in the country, and I believe it is one of the largest too, in terms of how far it spreads. To think that all of this is located underneath some fields is just amazing, especially if you consider that nobody would have any idea that there are people walking some 100 metres below them, if it weren't for the huge gaping hole on the surface that leads down into the complex of caverns.
