France 6, Grotte de la Cocaliere

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For our next trip I was persuaded the it would be nice to escape the heat by going down a cave. How foolish was that! We headed for the Grotte de La Cocaliere, said to be one of the three most beautiful caves in France. www.grotte-cocaliere.com . There weren't many people there and we had to wait for a guide. Eventually an extremely saturnine Frenchman appeared and beckoned us to follow him. He unlocked a door in the rock and motioned us inside. This is where I started to have second thoughts as extremely steep steps disappeared down into the bowels of the earth as far as one could see. There was room to stand up but it was very claustophobic, dark and steep and the first thing the guide did was lock the door behind us. Dim lights lit the stairs as we went down, down, down for what felt like half a mile and was definately hundreds and hundreds of steps. I felt I was entering the realm of the dwarves from Lord of the Rings. When we reached the bottom my legs were shaking and trembling so much I could hardly stand up. There were six of us on the tour and the other four were French, the guide only spoke french so we were totally ignored. I was praying my legs would hold out as we commenced a tour of some very spectacular caves, rock formations and natural wonders. I made sure I kept up because as we progressed through the dimly lit tunnels our guide switched out the lights behind us! How scary, looking back into pitch darkness. We were only underground about an hour but it felt much longer. I was glad to reach the end even though it meant viewing the skeletons that had been found there. The guide then produced a large bowl and started rattling it loudly for his tip! How subtle! The best bit was the little train ride back to the entrance. I think I'll stay above ground from now on, I wasn't meant to be a troglodyte!

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