Pool and wine

St Saturnin vineyard

Having worked our arses off all year, Rich and I try and get some holiday time. As well as caving, diving and exploring, we try to grab some quality time together.
This normally entails Rich snoring on the sunbed while I read, swim, sunbathe and repeat.
I often have to save up annual leave from work to get a decent amount of time in the Herault, as it's a two day journey each way.
Relaxing isn't something we do very much of, but we do try.
Camping val d'Herault is fairly quiet this time of year. The pool is cold but the river is still warm and the vineyards are still open.

St Saturnin vineyard

Our new favourite restaurant

Our new favourite wine!

Fab menu with fantastic food

The restaurant is in the Bueges valley, with a view of the entrance of Garrel, the cave we pushed
over the last few years...

Campsite pool

Rich

Rich in action

L'Esquirol

Christine rigging

I had heard about the cave but had never got around to actually going there. This is not surprising as it really isn’t easy to find. Jean Tarrit met us at St Maurice de Navacelles and we followed him through some winding lanes and through an obscure farm fence and down a track to a clearing. The cave was a short walk up from the parking spot. 
With only 4 hangers between us, rigging it was inventive and I set about it carefully. Ashley followed me down and we set up the radio location aerial on a flat bit of floor on the other side of some big decorations.
Ash then buggered off for half an hour into some wretched, muddy crawl while I set up my camera and tripod to take photos of the pitch.
Meanwhile, Rich and Jean set about doing the location on the surface and, true to form, they got a good 'null' with the help of dive spools in a prickly bush.

Ash on the ascent

Ash came back absolutely plastered in red mud having found the most horrid passage in the cave. I photographed him as he headed up the pitch and followed shortly.
Rich then kitted up and headed down the pitch to have a look around the chamber and retrieve the underground aerial.

Pleased with the job, we were heading back to the camp site when we found Jean searching the car for his lost phone. We searched everywhere but could not find it either at the cave or in the road. Fortunately he eventually found it - in pieces in the road a little further up from where we had stopped.
Not a great ending to an otherwise pleasant day.

Ash heading down L'esquirol

Rich radio locating

Rich in his favourite position!

Coudouliere

Pedro pretty much sums it up. Photo: Rick Van Dijk

 The Dutch were eager to head over to Coudouliere and make a few parts of the entrance boulder choke more Suex friendly.
This seemed like a good opportunity for me to deploy my Disto X and PDA combination and get some survey data of the dry passage leading to the sumps.
Over the last 6 months or so I’ve been trying to build up a paperless system and with help from various people, I now have a working upgraded Disto X which measures distance, compass and clinometer readings. 
This talks to a basic PDA via Bluetooth and stores the data in a neat free program called Pocket Topo. This also enables the user to sketch and draw cross sections as they go.
Even better, the data can be transferred via another neat program called Top Parser (Andrew Atkinson’s genius) to Therion survey program. Therion makes my head hurt and we were fortunate to have Jan Mulder (NL) along who was far more confident with it than me.

Gour pools in Coudouliere. Photo Rick van Dijk

One advantage of Therion of other programs is the ability to tie in additional data without having to re-draw – it simply adjusts the drawing as you go. 
But even so, it is not easy to learn and earlier this year I organised a weekend of all things Disto and Therion. It was oversubscribed so I should think we’ll be doing another one over the winter.
I had left my tippex in the car, which I was going to use to mark the survey stations. But we were saved by Pedro Ballordi’s pink nail varnish which Anton took a shine to…

We surveyed the boulder choke down to a junction and took the right hand branch, which led to a different sump, via a steep slope which needed a rope. Pedro set about putting some bolts in and rigged up a rope. The rock was similar to the Perdreau, with poor rock for bolts and we ended up tying into a huge boulder instead.

Anton takes a shine to Pedro's pink nail po

With this part of the survey done, we headed out and were met by a scooter making it’s way up through the boulders. Now that scooters fitted, the next trip would be less problematic.
We retired to the pub in St Jean de Bueges for cold pressions all round.

Aven de Rocas

Photo of Aven de Rocas on the front cover of
the 2015 CLPA inventaire

In 2012, the CLPA discovered several holes in a rough field, very close to Jean’s house in Le Besses.
For a few years I had joked that he had a cave in his garden.
The digging efforts of ‘Academie de Rocas’ had discovered several pitches, some with waterfalls and two of impressive dimensions. 
The front cover of the most recent journal of the CLPA was adorned with the biggest pitch.
Phillipe Vernant kindly offered to take us down Rocas and show us around. As part of the digging team, he knew the place extremely well.
Rick Van Dijk was up for his 3rd SRT trip here and Ashley and Rich stayed on the surface to sort out the radio location equipment, trying to get an accurate fix on a known chamber with a known survey.
Graham Naylor had built us a Nicola 3 prototype and two aerials to try to radio locate the large chamber a the end of the big sump in Coudouliere.
Now that the trip was off, we went to get a bit more practice and get a few more people trained in its use.
The entrance was a typical, muddy dig, with red slime everywhere. The ropes were bit quick too, covered in a layer of thick mud.
Still with a wobbly ankle and a newly damaged shoulder (from getting the boulder choke wrong in Coudouliere), I took my time. Some easy meandres later and the impressive pitches were met. 

Christine in the entrance

At the bottom of the final major pitch, we unpacked the radio location aerial and switched it on. The surface team began laying spools of line among bushes and, despite a fluctuating signal, thought they had got a fix.
Phillipe and I sat around for an hour putting the caving world to rights, while Rick sat in a higher chamber sorting out his camera for the return trip.
It was somewhat unfortunate that he had left his ‘pains au chocolate’ in our daren drum!
Once the hour was up, we switched it off, packed it up and made our way steadily out of the cave. 
My right shoulder was becoming fairly useless at this stage and I took quite a while to get off pitch heads, but this seemed to please Rick who was happily snapping away with his camera and achieving nice results. 

Once back in daylight, the surface team looked a bit sheepish.
They thought they had got a fix, but the numbers and signal had been fluctuating wildly and they couldn’t work out why.
This rang a bell.
I looked up and to my horror, the cave entrance was completely surrounded by overhead powerlines.
In fact, three of them created a perfect triangle and the cave was right in the middle of it!
Graham had warned us that overhead lines would cause big fluctuations in the signal and he wasn’t wrong!

Chris at one of the pitch heads. Photo: Rick Van Dijk

It would not have been an issue over Coudouliere – but here, the village was infested with them…
In any case, the fix point was GPS tagged and the co-ordinates given to Phillipe. He took them home and put an overlay if the cave survey onto Google Earth and …voila!
The fix was smack bang on top of the chamber we had been in.

This seemed far too good to be true…so we made plans to visit another cave – L’Esquirol – where I had never been before, to try again and make sure it was not a fluke. 
We retired to the café in St Maurice de Navacelles which is always a welcome refuge after caving and diving trips. 

Chris ascending

Main pitch in Aven de Rocas

Not our cat!

We appear to have a visitor.

Not our Cat has been sniffing around for the last few nights and today, he decided to make himself at home.
Luckily Rich and I are cat lovers but we are too busy and away too much to get our own.
So we adopted him!

Checking out the spare room

Checking out the spare bed

Quite happy on the spare bed...

Butter wouldn't melt

Found a perfect spot behind the explo box...

Chilling on the patio

Now he considers this his home...

Spoilt by Rich

Sweaty moggy

Sweaty cat

No boundaries...

Is my bacon ready?

I thought he might want a blanket. He did.

Rodel

Rick Van Dijk in Rodel dry passages

There seems to be a bit of a fad about sidemount at the moment. I'm not sure why, as most 'gurus' have rarely dived caves such as the Rodel, where sidemount is absolutely necessary.
It is not just necessary for the awkward carry (walk up a riverbed for 100 metres or so and then crawl on your belly for another 70 metres or so and then crawl/stoop the rest of the way) but underwater too. 
It is actually one of the easiest to access sites in the Herault, but if you don't like Trou Madame at low water, forget this one.
I love the place.
It is easiest to chain gear to make rapid progress to the sump and knee pads are essential.
The visibility is normally very good but a second thunder storm ruined it for this trip.
It was a milky 4 metres or so, but a good experience for Ash and Rick who hadn't dived it before.

Rich in Rodel

I took the opportunity to try some photos and more video but 
the visibility was nowhere near as good as 2012. 
But it was fun in any case...

Rick Van Dijk in Rodel cobble squeeze (advisable to dig it open first and keep away from the line which goes through the smallest part...)

Marker close to the end of the line

Abime de Mas Raynal

Christine descending Mas Raynal
Super Direct in 2002

It occurred to me that I hadn't been to this wonderful cave since about 2003. 
I was very much looking forward to rigging it this time, rather than being pushed back behind 'some bloke' who always assumed that it was a man's job. 
Bollocks to that, I say. 
In 2002, on only my 3rd SRT trip, I went 'over the edge' and did the main hang or 'super direct' route which is 106 clean metres straight off a rusty iron bar in broad daylight on a single rope.
The only interruption is a re-belay some 30m from the crashing river below. The water heads North West to Source du Sorgues and is typically blue and cold.

Rick Van Dijk on his 2nd SRT trip...

The multi-pitch route is friendlier and has some snaggy, slimy green slopes on route to the final hang.
It is partially P-hung and partially requires spits and hangers - so it's advisable to take some hangers.
Ashley, my CDG trainee, wanted to do the main hang on 8mm. He rigged it but only ascended it and used our ropes on the way down.
The cave is like Alum Pot on speed. I think it is a little bigger in dimensions but the main hang is about the same.

Sunlight pours down the main shaft and the chilly gloom of the massive side inlet makes for some great silhouette photos. 

Rich at the bottom of Mas Raynal

I'm very proud of Rich who, from a climbing background, is not a fan of hanging over big holes on a single rope, never mind in daylight. He managed to de-rig most of it mostly without complaint.

Me rigging

The view from the bottom

Ash on his way up the main hang

Ash ascending

Rich and Rick on the multi pitch route while Ash ascends in the background