Jungle bashing French style

Andras enjoys his evening a little too much!

Today was supposed to be another day off.

In reality, this means filling cylinders, washing minging caving and diving kit - all of which is covered in mud and smells of pee - and battling with French scrub to find resurgences to dive.

There is no such thing as an 'easy resurgence flop' in the Herault. I have images of people wandering round looking for turqoise head pools like the Truffe or Saint George, backing the car up and flopping in for caverns measureless....Forget it. They don't have any down here. Well, they have a few, but divers are seriously banned and attempting it would prompt a visit from the Mairie and then, most probably the Gendarme.

Anything worth diving requires effort, usually a days worth of scree skiing, steep hill climbing, bush bashing or caving - often on ropes and almost certainly with a degree of crawling. If you are not a caver, you would probably struggle down here. The good thing about being a caver here is that if all the dive sites are washed out, there is plenty of excellent caving to be getting on with instead, as there is with most limestone areas of France.

Christine's injuries from bush bashing

Rich and I spent a nice couple of hours in the warm, clear river Herault scrubbing kit after yesterdays adventure and Tim, Jarvist and Andras went off to dive the Sorgues - a short, but beautiful sump up in Aveyron.

In the evening, Rich and I set off to go and try to locate the 'Cents Fonts' - a group of 3 entrances, with various interesting dives. The great big red barrier across the path suggested that access was probably an issue and there were numerous political scrawlings across it relating to the cave access. We ran away.

The next one we went to find was the Banal. We found it from the river bed but it wasn't an easy carry. The entrance looked fun as well and it was starting to look like a days set-up for a dive. With not much time left, we tried to find another route in to the track which runs right by the cave entrance - we almost got there but a 4x4 is probably a wise option.......

So, we had a couple more options left to get a deep, quality dive in. With the Gourneyrou and Ras track closed, we had the Foux de la Viz in our back pocket, but were aware that it was a long walk in.



I bet Mr Westlake doesn't know THIS one...!