The Garonne and the Dordogne

Tuesday and we head out of the town towards the town of Tourtoirac where there is a most interesting set of caves open to the public "Grotte de Tourtoirac". We are the only visitors at 10 am this morning for a tour of the underground river, stalagmites and stalactites.

The underground cave was only opened to the public in 2010 and the operators claim that they enjoy about 30,000 visitors per year (not on May 30th). The caves were only explored by speleologists since the 1990's. Two of these explorers, Jean-Luc Sirieix and Annie Maire were part of a 4 person team one fateful day in February 1995 when these two got into some difficulty in the underground river and drowned . Not much is known as to the difficulty that they found themselves in but cloudy water and a narrowing gallery probably led to the tragedy.

Nevertheless the town elders were persuaded to open parts of the cave system to the public

and in 2000 a shaft was drilled some 75 foot into the main corridor. It was decided to open some 300 yards of the 1.9 mile cave (3 kms) and work was begun in 2007 to drill a larger access well and to install an elevator to allow the public below. The elevator and office are housed in this very unassuming little building deep in the forest near the town.

An underground cement path was laid leading to a long ,metal footbridge where the public can view the underground wonders. As reported above the caves were only opened in 2010 to the public and thus stern-voiced Garmin lady had NO idea that the caves even existed. I found out that her name is Michelle - no Michelle I ever knew sounded like her.

Such is the fear of disturbing the delicate structures that no
one is allowed to touch any of the stalagmites or stalactites - or take any photography underground. Thus the lack of any images folks, BUT you are lucky - we bought a book on the cave system (in English) and I've taken some photos of the pages, so that you can share with us the wonders of this system and some of the concretions. I know my almost-a-geologist older brother would have lapped up this tour underground. The website for the Grotte de Tourtoirac does have a wonderful slideshow and explanation in English. should you want to see some more of this site.

In the village we stopped by the old church - old enough that construction began in the year 1003. On one of the windowsills we saw what nearly 1,000 years worth of pigeon crap looks like.




At midday we stopped by the side of the road to consume some makeshift sandwiches from the baguettes, cheese and parma ham that we had purchased earlier.

We then tried to visit the Chateau Hautefort but work shuts down at this impressive building at 12:30 pm until reopening at 2 pm.  Bastardos!




We couldn't wait around that long - making for another set of underground caves. Michelle led us to a dead end road deep down a one lane road. Michelle is history for her mistake and has been replaced by Samantha, a much less stern sounding lady. We no longer trust Michelle!!!!!!!