Event de Rodel

Oz kitting up at dive base

Rich still wasn’t feeling up to a ‘big’ trimix dive, but was feeling a little better so we opted for an easy tourist dive which I had yet to visit.
The cave is close to the road (100m) and involved another 100m dry caving. We set off in the afternoon so it was a pretty hot carry to get our kit and all Joe’s filming gear into the cave. We had also opted for drysuits which was a good thing underwater, but involved a bit more carrying too. Kneepads are a must over drysuits in this cave.

A couple of hours of carrying, setting up, filming and getting ready to dive and Joe and Oz set off with the camera and Rich and I began kitting up to dive on their return.

As they returned, the amazing, azure blue sparkling water flashed in their lights and I knew this was going to be good…..but nowhere near as good as it turned out to be.

Oz and Joe spat their regs out and announced it was ‘stunning’ so without further a do, Rich and I set off under the rock and were greeted with perfect white walls, cobbled floor and sparkling blue water with infinite visibility.



Screen grab from Joe's film footage of the sump

I dived in front and we weaved our way along the bedding planes, taking our time and gawping at this beautiful underwater scenery.
We soon met a cobble slope which was snug and required some digging. Oz and Joe and already dug a bit to get through so very little work was required on our part and we popped through easily and continued to virtually the end of the line. Rich followed me through and we ended up in a convoluted boulder choke which was getting smaller and nastier and was clearly a section of breakdown and the line was in bad order so I thumbed the dive as we were close to thirds anyway and had a leisurely swim home.
The carry out took half the time of the carry in and Oz and Joe had neatly tidied everything into 4 manageable tackle bags. We were out just as dusk turned to nightfall and we headed back to camp for dinner and some wine. A good day out!

Not the Rabanel....

Carmen Smith descending the
Abime de Rabanel in 2002

Tuesday is something of a disaster….

I was quite looking forward to the Abime de Rabanel which is a 120m ish deep pothole in thick scrubland, not far from the campsite. I last did this cave in 2002 and was looking forward to rigging it.

Rich was still feeling unwell so we left the trip until the afternoon, but he still wasn’t up to joining us. Oz and Joe meanwhile went to the showcave ‘Grotte de Demoiselles’ and when they returned, we set off to the cave.

It was a long time since I’d been here but Clive had been more recently so he seemed the choice to follow up the path. After 30 minutes of walking in blistering heat with heavy rope bags and camera gear, I had a feeling it was wrong and we had gone too far. I remembered it being only 10 minutes walk and I turned everyone round to take a different path. This one immediately looked familiar and in 5 minutes we were at the entrance.

Vis Gorge

I had been told that the cave was all P-hung (Wrong!) thus not taking any hangers with me and that 40m was enough rope for the first pitch (wrong again!) - so I scared myself silly on Noel’s 9.5mm ‘rope’ whilst hanging from a tree stump over the edge of a cliff with 120m space between my heels, only to abseil onto the knot 6m off the floor!!
Furious, I changed over and prusiked up the rope and thumbed the trip – and headed back for wine and to see if Rich was OK.

It was down on the beach that I discovered that my camera, which had been in a tackle bag that got thrown onto the floor (and not by me) had broken and was spouting ‘lens error’. Knowing that canon G9s don’t like being knocked at all, we asked around about temporary repairs and the result is that it is beyond economical repair. So, the photos you see for the next day or two are the last from this great little camera. RIP canon G9 :-(

We have internet! Better late than never.....

We finally arrived!
After a night on the tiles in Salisbury seeing off a work colleague of mine – good luck Sandra!! – we woke at 7am ish to chuck the final bits in the already bulging van and set off to Dover.
Gary Jones sadly not coming now as he couldn’t get his gear up together in time, so we didn’t need to swing by his place to pick it up.
We pulled into the ferry terminal 10 minutes before the off and drove straight onto the ferry. A miserable and expensive lunch later (should have gone in the posh restaurant as usual but decided to save a few quid in the canteen – mistake!) we sat about in the filthy lounge……Seafrance have finally let things slip :-(

So we arrived in Calais and set off on the boring section of northern French péage. The plan was to stop at Bourges, just south of Vierzon and after dinner, we pulled in here at an F1 hotel and got a good kip as usual.
We were treated to the usual welcome strong coffee, fresh bread and orange juice before setting off south again.

5 hours later we arrived at the Millau bridge. When I first visited the Herault with my caving club in 2002 this hadn’t been built and it took 2 hours to weave through the town of Millau. Nowadays, the bridge makes the 12 hour journey nearer 10 and shortly afterwards, we turned off to head to the campsite the ‘pretty way’. This involves wiggling down the hairpin bends of the Viz gorge and taking some piccies and video on the way.

Millau Bridge

This first viewpoint of the ‘Gorges de Herault’ is stunning and you really feel that you have ‘arrived’ when you see it. Of course, you haven’t really, as another hour of negotiating narrow villages with enormous speedhumps is still to come.

Vis Gorge

We arrived and started to put the tent up while Rich took timelapse photos of it going up. Nice idea at the time……














The others (Noel, Clive, Osama and Joe) had arrived a day early and had gone caving to the ‘Event de Rognes’ or ‘Rubbish Dump cave’ as the Wessex Cave Club had dubbed it.

Event de Rognes - by Clive Westlake,
taken on a previous trip

So Rich and I sat on the beach down by the Herault river which is a couple of minutes walk from the tent and as it was crystal clear and warm, I jumped in for a swim as the sun went down.

Rich isn’t feeling great and is wondering if he is ill, so we’re going to leave the diving until Wednesday and go caving today. Internet is being fixed today (Tuesday) so posting may be a bit random.

Rich chills in his hammock

Rich takes in the view of the Vis Gorge

Analysis should be the first four letters....

Well, pretty much all of the stages are in our posession now and it's time to make sure that they are labelled up, analysed and full.

With multiple divers and multiple cylinders knocking about on campsites and on diving trips like this, it's imperative first of all that cylinders are marked as your own. Thanks to Mark Emery at DiveSigns, we have beautifully marked name and MOD stickers on our cylinders so that at a glance, we know which ones belong to whom.

The next job is to make sure the gas is correct, by analysing it and labelling it up with a sticker which should sit on the curved shoulder of the cylinder.

The sticker should always contain four key pieces of information and should be analysed prior to every dive - without exception - even if you think you know what is in the cylinders. At one end of the scale, this could save you a wasted dive by forgetting that a cylinder is empty. At the other, it could save your life if it is filled with the wrong gas.

Having analysed the gas and checked the bottle is full, you should write on the label: The date of analysis, your initials/signature, the pressure and the gas mix, including the decimal point. Writing down the decimal point indicates to the diver that they are about to breathe analysed gas - and not the gas they asked for at the shop!

Cave divers have a real interest in making sure those cylinders are full, as carrying them kilometers through arduous dry cave to only find that they are empty, amongst other things, doesn't earn you brownie points with your mates or sherpas!!

Cave Diving - it's not for girls!

Well, so you would think as we seem to be some way behind on things like underwater peeing devices.

Having put up with granny nappies for years - and poor Rich putting up with the wiff on the way back to base in the van....I decided to try a design which Rachael Kendall was keen to show me.

Her design costs less than £30 to put together (plus suit pee valve) and involves a 'Wizz Freedom' (the purple bit, which you can get from Amazon), a quick connect (available from OThree), a bit of norprene hose, a thong and some lycra shorts or similar.

Instructions on how to put it together are here: Amphibian Productions
The real test will be in France and I'll see how I get on with it, but for now it appears to be working!

There's a hole in my drysuit, dear.........

Trying to keep your drysuit dry is part and parcel of cave diving.

Some hole-spotting on a sunny day is one way to spend the time I guess...but worth the effort for a more comfortable dive.

God knows what the neighbours must think with this 'blow up' doll in the back garden.......

Take the stage....

The family of stages is growing nicely....

We have an array of cylinders going down to France and I thought I'd talk a little about what we have and why.

The aluminium stages are obviously for trimix and deco gases and 'travel' gas - to get us where we need to be whilst leaving our 'backgas' intact.
Aluminium stages sit much better in the water and we can carry 5 or more fairly comfortably. These are going down for the resurgences.

Whilst some folk do dive sidemounted with aluminium stages, it is avoided in UK cave diving for two simple reasons. The cylinders are heavier than steels above water, making carrying them through dry caves harder - and they also only allow 200 bar, which is a bit lean given you've just carried their heavy backsides all the way through a cave!!
So, steels are the way to go for sidemounting. They sit beautifully in the water and contribute to the divers weighting system, meaning we don't have to carry extra lead through same said cave to compensate for the lively bouyancy characteristics of aluminium cylinders.

There are a few sidemount caves we plan on visiting and therefore we're taking steel cylinders for these, as we would at home, to make the whole process as easy as possible.
This of course means less space in the vans....luckily Osama has a big transit and can take the worst from us.