4th European Speleological Conference, Villard en Lans

Keith and Pete headed of for another Via Ferrata - Pete would do that and Keith planned to walk up to the top and meet him. Karen and I decided to go and see the Grottes de Choranche show cave. As this was at the further end of the Bourne Gorge, we took the same detour as the other day to Pont en Royans and on the way were flagged down by a van full of cavers. We had seen their white van at the Speleo Conference camp site car park and it had large red Cyrillic lettering on the rear. They were asking if we knew the way to the Grottes de Choranche! I told them that we were going there and they said that they would follow us. They did this until we reached the main road and they stopped at a shop.
We arrived at the car park and I realised the the huge bay in the large limestone crag opposite was where the Grotte de Bournillon was located. I had though it was further up the Bourne Gorge and would be out of reach due to the road works. It turned out that you could actually drive some 14 kilometres up the gorge from Pont en Royans. We bought some tickets for the cave and as we had half an hour before the next tour, we had an ice cream and a drink at the restaurant while sitting on the balcony.
We then headed into the show cave (we saw the cavers from the white van so they had made it). I had been to the show cave in 1990 while on the WSG Gouffre Berger trip and remembered it as being well decorated and it was.
Afterwards, we walked the short distance to the Grotte de Gournier where there were even a couple of dinghies! These are required to cross the very deep lake in the entrance. After returning to the car we drove a short distance back up the Gorge road and turned right onto the track leading to the hydro-electric works down by the Grotte de Bournillon and parked up behind two cars part way down as there was a closed gate preventing us going any further. We walked down the track and passed the power station and followed the path on the right-hand side which passed under a large steel pipe dropping down steeply to the power station. You could hear the water rushing down the pipe as you passed underneath. We followed on until we reached the impressive entrance (the largest in France) of the Grotte de Bournillon. It was a hot day and it was nice to get into the cool air near the entrance. We continued on into the massive entrance and stopped at a metal bridge which crossed to the other side where the cave closed down to more "normal" proportions. The water levels were very low.
After returning to the car we headed back to Villard to eat. Afterwards it was back to the gite to start packing up everything as we had an early start in the morning: we left at 5:00am for our 9:00am flight from Lyon back to Birmingham.