Saturday 2nd October BACK TO TOP

We were woken up horribly early as the ferry came in to Ouistraham. There was just time to have some bacon and eggs before getting in to the cars for the drive down. The drive was pretty uneventful – other than Ian (in the other car) getting hopelessly lost. It turned out that he didn’t actually have a clue where we were staying in France – so obviously didn’t know were he had to go. We eventually guided him in by telephone. However did he manage before the invention of the mobile telephone?

We were all pretty knackered after the drive, so we did some quick shopping in nearby Gourdon, followed by a meal out and we all crashed.

Sunday 3rd October BACK TO TOP

I was woken in the middle of the night by Ian’s mobile ringing. It was one of his Swedish tarts calling. Next door I could hear Ian yakking away, at one point he even said “I’m having to talk quietly so as to not wake Keith”. Too late, I fear!

I got up properly at 7:30 and after shower and brekky got my kit together. This didn’t take long, so I settled down to read the NSS cave diving manual in a desperate hope to remember all the information that Kevin had passed on to us 2 years before. Tim was building his Mk15 – something that might have been better done by a qualified plumber when you looked at all the workings inside it.

By 10:15 we were all finally ready to go and we set off for Ressel.

We arrived to find that the Germans had (obviously) got there before us. They were kitted up and just going in.

We faffed around for a while – Tim was meant to be diving with John but John seemed to have got lost on the way to Ressel. Just as we were about to get in ourselves John turned up with his family, so Ryan, Ian and I went in.

We floated gently upstream to where the entrance to the cave is. We exchanged oks, then submerged through the murky river water to where the clear water was coming out from the entrance. The entrance itself was completely blocked as the Germans; having completed their dive, were now doing drills in the entrance. We waited patiently while they faffed around. Lordy knows what they thought doing drills with a bunch of English folk grouped round them watching.

Eventually they got out of the way and we entered the cave. Ryan led, then I followed and Ian followed up behind. The viz in the cave was very good – at least 20m. We had an excellent view of the strata in the limestone stretching in front of us up the cave. I was struggling with my buoyancy – this was the first time I’d been in a cave with my breaver and it was tricky. I was too heavy, despite the fact that I was carrying no weightbelt. That’ll be the effect of Dez’s 10l that I
was carrying as bailout! I had to put too much air in my suit and it had migrated to my feet, partly making my feet fall out of my drysuit boots.

Ryan set off into the cave at quite a pace. I kept up with him but was struggling with my poor buoyancy and with my half off fins. I didn’t pay as much attention to Ian behind me as I should have done and didn’t notice when we left him behind once or twice. He had forgotten
to swap his VR3 from trimix back to air and was finding it tricky to do so while chasing after us. Ian also stopped to re-attach some of the snoopy loops that had come off the rock – after all a tidy cave is a happy cave.

At the section where the cave splits into two we had planned to go straight on to get to the deeper section first. Despite this, Ryan turned left and we went off down the side tunnel instead. Oh, ok! We followed the shallow section round and then dropped down the shaft to the deeper section. I was still having a hard time with my buoyancy and the change in depth wasn’t helping at all.

We continued down here until we eventually reached where the two parts of the tunnel rejoined. The line we were following was joined back to the main line so there was no need for us to lay a jump line. We exchanged oks and proceeded back along the deep route again. It seemed
to me that Ryan was still going waay too fast and I slowed him down a couple of times. My buoyancy was still all over the place and my fins were half off.

Going back along the deep section we reached the bottom of the shaft where it goes shallow again. The view was fantastic – Ryan was ahead of me illuminating the shaft, the cave had opened up and it was amazing to see the size of it with Ryan giving it a fantastic sense of scale.

We slowly made our way up the shaft and then back over the collapsed section of cave back to where the original split was. Going back down the cave we discovered the fantastic game of shining your torch on the bubbles on the ceiling of the cave – left there by the pesky
bubble-blowing divers who’d been there previously. These made pretty good mirrors on the ceiling and so would reflect the torch back downwards again, making a duplicate picture of the bubbles on the floor of the cave. Fantastic. And, what was better still, was when the bubbles
got disturbed by the wash off Ryan’s dolphin-kicking finning technique. This would make the reflected beams shimmer and wobble in a really pretty manner.

Before long we were back at the restriction, which Ryan led us over again. Back at the entrance I took some more snaps of Ryan in the entrance; always the easy cave-diving photos to take.

The sun had come out while we’d been in the cave and it was hot out on the side while we had our lunch of bread and pate and brie. Lovely.

Before long we were back in the water preparing for our second dive. Ryan stayed out this time in order to give Nette directions over the telephone – she’d landed at Toulouse airport during the morning and was struggling to navigate and drive on the wrong side of the road and find our gite. This left Ian and I to dive again.

I led this time. On initially getting into the cave (no Germans this time!) it appeared very different for me. No longer was I following the brightly lit Ryan, now there was only my torch lighting the way. My eyes took a few moments to adjust and it was a very dark place until they did. Even when they had adjusted if I shone my torch directly down the cave its beam would be swallowed up in the distance.

We continued in the cave; I laid a line marker when we got to the split. It wasn’t really necessary but it made me feel like a proper grown-up cave diver :o)

We carried straight on over the collapsed section and then dropped down into the deep section. My buoyancy was much better than in the morning. I don’t know why – I guess these things take a dive to settle down. I’d also put my fins on tighter so they were a lot more comfortable.this time.

In the deep section I found some life for Ian – a tiny little white creepy-crawly thing. No idea what it was.

We eventually got to the split, where we turned onto the side line and followed it back round, ascending back shallow again, and following the tunnel round until we again re-joined the main line. It was then a straightforward pootle back, through the constriction and back to the surface. Fantastic.

It was then just a gentle float downstream with the slight current in the Célé and we were back to where we could get out. The walk back up the river bank with the 10l side-slung was hard work, but it wasn’t far. We de-kitted quickly, then bundled my stuff back into Ryan’s bus so we could dash back and meet up with the very tired Nette, who was by now waiting for us back at the Gite.

I cooked chicken curry for tea. Yum.

Monday 4th October BACK TO TOP

Some days are worth getting up for. This was going to be one of them.

I got up early and had a quick brekky, before doing the little bit of faff that I had. We were all ready to go by ten past nine – only ten minutes behind schedule!

We went off to Ressel again. We all got kitted up and were in the water fairly prompt. Here the first faff happened. My Custom Divers HID – that had just come back from them having been serviced – wouldn’t spark up. I was furious. It came back from the service with “no fault found”. I
had had the fault come back and kick me in the balls big time. I’m going to buy a Sartek HID as soon as I get home and send a very angry letter to Custom Divers.

Anyway, with some quick torch rearrangement it wasn’t long before I was back in the water again with another, working, HID. We swam upstream and entered the cave. Ian led in, then me and Ryan. We were all following Tim and John.

Once past the restriction Ian decided we should overtake Tim and John, and did so, I followed, but in doing so we left Ryan behind. I signalled to Ian, and we stopped and waited for Ryan. It was good to follow the other two in any case as they lit up the cave a long way in front of us
and clearly showed that the viz was in excess of 30m.

At the split we continued straight on over the collapse and down into the deep section. We continued on past where we had reached the day before, where the cave joins back together again. Only five minutes past there we reached the bit were the cave drops down. It opens up into a huge cavern and the floor drops away beneath us.

Tim and John were already in the pit – they were sitting on a shelf halfway down the shaft. The view was utterly utterly fantastic. There were five of us in this huge cavern, lighting it all around and the effect was completely magical. This was one of those very special moments that you’ll remember for ever. Definitely one of my best diving moments to date.

We had a bit of a photo shoot in there. Ian had carried in Ryan’s big video light that helped to light up the vast space. I then dropped down and hit 40m, which was one of my targets for this week. The shaft still carried on some 5m or so beneath me – it was hugely tempting to carry on. Common sense fortunately prevailed and I stopped at 40m. I had 1 minute of no deco time left and it seemed best not to push things too far. I slowly ascended back up the shaft, all the time looking around at the fantastic cavern that we were in.

We didn’t hang around there for much longer. Tim and John went back off up the tunnel and we gently followed them. I suspect everybody was inwardly grinning as much as I was.

When we reached the split we went off up the shallow route. Ryan was now leading and going nice and gently for once. We kept on stopping and taking photos which was cool. It was really great to be on the rebreather and have the time pressure completely taken away.

When we got back to the main passage again Ian was faffing around. Ryan obviously wanted to take photos so I went and posed, pretending to be retrieving Ian’s line marker. Sadly I didn’t know that Ryan was shooting video rather than taking stills so he now has a film of me stationary by the marker!

We gently finned back, through the restriction and then out of the cave. This was definitely one of the dives of my life. Fantastic.

Back at the river bank Nette was waiting for us with Anwen. We had a quick lunch and then Ian and I took Nette in for a little look at the cave.

Nette was nervous to start with, but as soon as she saw that the river was not completely manky she calmed down. And this was before she even saw the cave! We gently swam up the river, put in our mouthpieces, exchanged oks, and sank. I led in, Nette following and Ian behind her. Once inside the cave I turned and could see that Nette was having a whale of a time. You can tell when someone’s enjoying themselves underwater and it was pretty clear that Nette was!

We slowly carried on just a few minutes into the cave – the entrance was clearly visible still, and I turned the dive. It was enough to give Nette an idea of what we come back raving about. Ian led back to the entrance. Once back outside the cave we left Nette to drift downstream back to Ryan and Anwen, while Ian and I went back in to do some drills.

We did line laying first. I made a belay around a rock and started in to the cave, making secondary belays as I went. I thought they went pretty well. After doing six of them we turned around and I wound the line back in while Ian took the slack out of the line. Then Ian had a go – I
would light the rocks for him while he did the belays. Again, he did six and we turned and wound the line back in.

Then we did some blacked out lost line drills. We went further into the cave, so that the entrance was no longer visible. We extinguished torches and then I span round to disorientate myself. What a good job I did. I had absolutely no idea which way round I was – indeed it was hard to be sure which way was up or down! It was absolutely black – eyes open or eyes shut, it made no difference.

I lost buoyancy and slowly dropped down to the floor. I felt around until I found a good rock to belay around. I made a belay and made my way off in an arbitrary direction, slowly unreeling line as I went. I had one had out in front of me, feeling up and down and around so as to
not bash into too many rocks. Dez’s 10 took a bit of a battering nevertheless.

At first this was a fun exercise, but after I eventually hit a wall and found no line it started to become a bit scarier. When we’d done it previously there was always the knowledge that Kevin was watching over us and would without a doubt sort us out if we got into any serious
trouble. There was no such comfort this time. There was just me and Ian alone in a completely black cave.

Having not found the line one way, I reeled back in and looked in the opposite direction. This was tricky – there was a complete jumble of rocks and making any progress in the complete darkness was tricky. Eventually I came to a stop again, so turned and reeled back in.

I had been singing to start with but not any longer. An exercise this may be, but I was, frankly, scared.

Back at the belay I then turned 90 degrees and again headed off. Again there was a horrendous jumble of rocks that were a nightmare to get through. No luck. I went back and tried the fourth way. There were less rocks this way, but again no line. As I turned round to reel in this time I was aware that the line was leading me into a narrower and narrower section of cave. The roof was lowering and I tried to find a better way. I found one, over the rock and to the right, but the string
was definitely not going this way – it was back in the narrow bit. I tried again to go through the narrow section, but was getting increasingly frightened in the pitch black by the restriction.

My bottle went. I turned my torch back on. I had technically died.

With the light on it was easy to follow the string back to my belay. It was frustrating to see that only a couple of metres from it was the line – it was up in the air (water?) over two rocks and I had gone underneath it! How depressing.

Despite the exercise being a failure for me, I think it was a very good reality check after the morning’s dive and it showed me just how much I still have to learn about cave diving.

Ian then had a go at the lost line drill. We blacked out again and I hung there while Ian went through what I had done. Again he experienced the same alarm and fear that I had. He was better at finding the line though, and successfully got to it. I had been hanging around in the
darkness for about 15 minutes when I heard a “woohooo!” from somewhere. He’d obviously found himself. A little later his torch went on – he was a good 10m away down the cave.

I was getting quite cold by now so we called the dive and exited. A very, very useful exercise.

Once out we warmed up very quickly – the sun was beating down on the road and it was very hot there. We quickly changed and headed back home.

In addition to the normal kit faff I looked at my failed torch. It soon became apparent that there was a break in the umbilical cable somewhere. I cut off 10cm of it and bypassed the switch and I should at least have a torch again for the rest of the week. When Custom Divers get it back for repair again I hope they’ll be able to spot the fault – it’s now full of my dodgy soldering and bits of insulating tape! Hopefully it’ll be waterproof for the rest of the week!

Nette cooked steak tea. Fab!

Tuesday 5th October BACK TO TOP

Up early and got kit prepped ready to go by nine again. Sadly no-one else was quite so keen and I was left hanging around while everyone else flapped around.

Eventually we were ready and we went off to Gouffre de Cabouy. Ian was on the telephone to his Swedish people shouting at them for not carrying on working while he was off on holiday.

After a little navigating faff we found Cabouy. Ryan was off doing family holiday; John had to look after his poorly child, so that left Ian, Tim and I to dive. The header pool for Cabouy was covered with a particularly unpleasant looking scum.

Ian led the dive, with Tim then I. The entrance to the cave is a steep slope of gravel leading down to 30m. The rock roof is about a metre above the gravel, the walls were a good few metres off either side. At the bottom of the slope the cave opens out hugely – the tunnel is 3 or
4 metres high and 2 or 3 wide. The shapes in the limestone were fantastic – huge fluted bits sticking out in the strata. The viz was nowhere near as good as Ressel though, only about 10 metres. It generally seemed quite murky.

My torch was working ok, with no signs of leaking which was my biggest worry.

We progressed into the cave, taking it nice and easy. We had plenty of time to look at the various shapes in the rock. The depth decreased to 20m, then to 15. After 30 minutes of gentle swimming it then started getting even shallower – we progressed up a fairly steep slope and were then on top of this huge plateau at 4 metres. The sides of the cave were barely visible. On the top of the plateau were two cave line markers in the string – one pointing back the way we came, and the
other pointing forwards. This meant we were halfway to the other exit – at Pou Meyssen. Cool or what? We turned the dive and I led out. After about 5 minutes Tim signalled me to slow down. There was no time pressure so I backed right off the pace, taking the whole thing nice and easy.

The cave was now seeming much darker to me, as I no longer could see Tim or Ian’s torches. I was just following the line, staying fairly close to it. We recovered the few line markers we’d laid as we progressed out. We were then back at the deep section, and just had the gentle ascent back into the warm water.

John had arrived while we were diving. We had lunch, then Ian and I went in again; Tim would dive with John.

Ian and I went in with me leading, We picked up the pace slightly compared to the morning’s dive. We reached the mid-point of the cave by 27 minutes. It seemed a shame to turn so early on so we progressed in even further. Beyond the plateau there was a gravel slope leading deeper
again. We continued in for another five minutes when we found a fork in the cave. One fork was clearly labelled off to Pou Meyssen, the other just had a marker pointing pack to the join. We’d gone far enough for the day and so I turned the dive and then Ian led out.

On the way out we passed John and Tim, on their way in to the cave. Ian decided it’d be really funny to hide, and so cupped his torch. Of course not only could Tim and John not see him, but I couldn’t, either. Also I didn’t know the game he was playing and so wondered if he’d had a real torch failure. I couldn’t see any signals he might be doing as he’d effectively disappeared in the blackness. The other two got closer and closer – their torches casting a weird green light through the murk. Ian eventually got bored of his game and released his torch. I’m not entirely sure what it achieved.

It wasn’t long before we were back at the deep section and were then out of the cave.

As we were getting changed Andy and Phil turned up. They’d had some fairly dodgy dives at St Sauveur in the morning and were looking for something a little better. We chatted a bit before they went in. Ian managed to come up with the star comment for the day. He was talking
about the shallow section, at the halfway point. “It was so shallow that you could almost stand up and surface. Well, you could if the roof wasn’t there”. Of course, that rather is the point of cave diving I think!

Then we cleared off home. We stopped at Rocamadour for an ice cream on the way back which was very pleasant.

Nette cooked spag bol for tea. Yum. I was particularly knackered and crashed soon after.

Wednesday 6th October BACK TO TOP

We woke up without any definite plan for the day. We wanted to do Saint Georges, but Andy and Phil had said it was “milky” when they did it a few days earlier. “Milky” is one of those totally open-ended descriptions that could mean any sort of viz from 15m to 0.

We talked to then some more after breakfast; they reckoned about 5 – 6 metre viz. That had to good enough, so that was our target for the day.

When we got there it didn’t look too bad, at least compared to Cabouy. There was no scum on the surface, at least. We kitted up and got in. The plan was for me to lead, Ian next, with Ryan bring up the rear. We would do 25 minutes at the most before turning the dive. We wanted to get to the underwater lake, but weren’t sure that 25 minutes would do it. Nevertheless that was our calculated baleout limit, so that was it.

I followed the string as I descended – the viz really was shite and I couldn’t see more than a foot or two. After descending a few metres the viz improved a bit and I let go of the string. The entrance was the steep gravel and rocky slope that I remembered from two years previously. The roof varied from a metre to 1½ metres above the gravel. The easiest way to get down was to go horizontally, sideways. We bumped our way off the roof all the way down – this was preferable to
stirring up the gravel.

At 30 metres the slope stops in a muddy bank. We took big pains to avoid this – as this would definitely not settle out quickly if disturbed. The viz had settled down to about 5 metres as Andy and Phil had promised. The walls of the cave were black, and fairly substantially covered with the silt. This had the effect of making it seem very dark indeed. I didn’t stray far from the line.

I laid a line marker pretty soon, and then followed the string. The roof of the cave was out of torch range, as was one of the walls for a lot of the time. The string was all over the place, changing sides and going up and down the walls. I set a nice gentle pace following it. It was fairly
scary in the darkness – I needed some mental effort to keep convincing myself that everything was ok, that the dark didn’t matter, and so on.

The cave was much siltier than I remembered from 2 years previously. The silt in itself had very pretty formations in it from where the current runs in the winter. The depth was getting progressively less the further we went. At one point there was a large mud bank that we gently floated up. Sadly there was evidence that others had not been so careful – there was huge scours in it from careless fin kicks. From the direction of the scars it was also pretty plain that whoever made them wasn’t even doing frog kick. It’s a shame.

There were frequent markers on the line, every 20 metres or so. It was good to watch the distance slowly ticking up. After 18 minutes we came across a line leading off the main line, leading up into the air bell that was as far as we’d got 2 years ago. I laid another marker, and we
carried on. The time was ticking by, getting close to our agreed time limit. The distance markers were also going up – 310m, 330m, 350m, 370m. We were at 24 minutes when we finally hit the split in the line where it went up to the underground lake. We gathered around the split while I checked that the others were happy to progress up. They agreed.

We had to lay a marker before we did so though. I could no longer get to the line as Ian and Ryan were now in the way. I was shouting at Ian “WE HAVE TO LAY A MARKER. WE HAVE TO LAY A MARKER” but he didn’t get it. Finally I took one of mine and gave it to him, and he laid it
just as he should do. Phew.

We progressed up the string. I was right up in the ceiling, in an attempt at keeping off the huge silt bank that was in front of us. The bubbles we were venting were rushing up the rock face in front of me. Eventually we reached the surface. It was fantastic. We were floating in this huge chamber – the roof was about 15 metres above our heads. The mud bank continued out of the water on one side, the rest of it was this huge rock dome.

We spent about 5 minutes floating there, taking in the magnificent view. At one point Ryan took out his mouthpiece and said “this is amazing!”. I took out mine: “it certainly is. I’m not breathing
this stuff for any longer though!”. We’d all read tales of divers dying in air bells because the air was hypoxic.

When we came to submerge we had, inevitably, stirred up the silt somewhat. It couldn’t really be helped, sadly. It was a few moments before we could locate the line again. When we did, Ryan led out, with Ian following and me bringing up the rear. We descended to the mainline, where I recovered my marker and we then progressed back out of the cave.

This was much better from my perspective – I was no longer in front with just a short section of string lit up by my torch, instead I now could see Ian and Ryan in front of me, too. This was a great help. I was starting to get cold though as my drysuit was leaking just a bit, and the water had now seeped down to my legs.

We traced our way back gently, getting slowly deeper and deeper. As we went I decided that this would be my only dive of the day – I was distinctly wet. I also played a few light tricks – briefly covering up my torch and looking at Ian and Ryan silhouetted in front. In the murk their torches looked brown – more like normal halogen bulbs rather than the HIDs that they are.

Before long we reached the deep section and started slowly progressing back up the slope. Before long the pale green glow of the entrance was just about visible ahead. As we progressed further the green started to turn brown as we got into the yukky header pool. We slowly surfaced.

John and Tim were there – they had turned the dive at 21 minutes and hadn’t quite got as far as we did. One thing we all agreed on was that it was particularly dark and horrible. Ian called it the “Troll Hole”. It’s possible he has been living in Scandinavia for too long.

Back at the cars it became apparent that I wasn’t alone in wanting a one dive day. Ryan was happy not to dive again, and Ian was quickly dissuaded. John didn’t want to dive again. Only Tim was keen on going in again, but he had no-one to dive with.

While we were having lunch (the mandatory bread, brie and pate) a campervan turned up with German plates. They were obviously divers looking for somewhere to dive (there’s no other reason you’d be down this track after all) so we got chatting. Obviously we talked in English; no-one was ever silly enough to try talking German. They were asking what the cave was like and the visibility. We told them; dark (there’s a surprise for a cave!) with 5m viz. They wandered off to
look at the header pool for about 5 minutes, then they came back. “Ve sink ve vill dive zomplace else”. They all got back into their van and drove off. We wondered just what they were after; it didn’t look too bad from the header pool, and certainly looked better than Cabouy did.

Maybe they were upset at not getting there first and reserving their space with their towels?

So anyway, we decided to go to Rocamadour for buns instead of a second dive. Even Tim thought this a good idea.

On the way we found out that Nette and Lynne were in Cahors so we diverted and went there instead. We had a very pleasant afternoon on a tourist boat going down the Lot being told about all the wonderful history of Cahors.

After that it was time to go back to the Gite were we had a tea of pizza and chips. Smashing.

Thursday 7th October BACK TO TOP

Up early as usual, then after breakfast and faff we were off to Cabouy again.

The plan today was to take it nice and easy and have a really good gentle dive. Ian took the video camera (and light) in, while Ryan took his camera. I took my mp3 player.

Ian led the dive, then I came next with Ryan behind. Ian dropped down the gravel slope and we got to the elbow at the bottom with no problem. We changed set points and started gently into the cave. I laid a marker. I generally hung down at the bottom of the cave, doing low flying exercises over the rocks. Ian was floating higher up. After a short while he started videoing. He turned on the big light and hung in the cave. As he was stopped, I stopped too so as to not mess up the order. He didn’t video for long before continuing into the cave. After he’d finished he let go af the big light and it adopted its natural position – pointed back and down, i.e. straight at me. Fortunately he didn’t leave it long before turning it off.

I could also see some flashes from Ryan behind. Whenever I turned round to pose for him he stopped taking pics for some reason.

Ian stopped a few more times to take more video – I generally ignored him now and just carried on regardless. When Ian finished he would then scoot forwards to resume his position again.

As we were going so slowly I had plenty of time to have a good look around at the immensely pretty rock formations around us. Fantastic.

At 25 minutes I turned the dive, as that was our agreed time limit. We’d come about 300m into the cave.

I was now following Ryan out. We progressed very slowly, still taking time to enjoy the scenery. Ian shot a little more video.

Once back at the bottom of the slope Ian started videoing again; sadly I didn’t control my buoyancy too well and I fear I stirred up the gravel a bit too much for him. Oops.

Lunch was a huge ham and brie sandwich which was particularly lovely.

The plan for the afternoon was to shoot more video and take more pictures. And, of course, to have a lovely dive.

I think we generally succeeded – it was a very chilled out dive, very very relaxing. Sadly Ryan forgot to clear the air from his wide angle lens, but hopefully that won’t effect the pictures too badly. We came out of the water very happy with ourselves; it’s so good to have a totally relaxing dive every so often.

Back out on the surface we found out that John and Tim hadn’t had quite such a good dive – John had blacked out at one point briefly and had just managed to swap to his baleout. Obviously they aborted the dive and returned to the surface on open circuit. He says that his handsets were reading 1.2 though. Maybe there’s a problem with his mushroom valves in the mouthpiece. Anyway, he survived to dive again which is obviously the most important thing. On examining John’s scrubber later in the day it was found to have set like a breeze block. Not what you want. It was new scrubber that morning and was well within its limits. Something was obviously wrong with it, though.

As we were clearing up and getting changed another English car arrived at the site. A single chap got out – along with his two 20 litre cylinders, another 10 litre of O2, and his scooter. Cool! We chatted briefly – it was his birthday and he was celebrating by “doing something special”. Diving in Cabouy seemed pretty special to us, too!

Ian and Tim went in to the header pool again briefly just to check out Tim’s weight – it seemed to most of us that Tim was carrying far too much.

Ryan and I came back to the Gites to meet up with Nette and Anwen again. We chilled out for a bit, topped up the air bank, and then Nette cooked a variety of foreign sausages for tea.

Friday 8th October BACK TO TOP

Got up after a very restless night feeling absolutely knackered. Did the usual faff and then we were off to Ressel. We all fancied a good, easy, spectacular dive to finish the week on.

At Ressel we were gently kitting up when our German friends turned up again. Ha! Too late – we already had our towels spread out :o)

The plan for the dive was to take it nice and easy, take photographs, Ian was going to shoot more video, and generally have a good time. We set a turn time of 30 minutes, we hoped to be able to make the shaft at -40m in that time.

I led in, Ryan came along next, with Ian bring up the rear. I set a reasonable pace in – not fast, but not leisurely, either. The cave was as stunning pretty as always, the viz still absolutely stonking. As the first in the viz wasn’t that easy to appreciate though as there were no torches in front of me to give a sense of perspective. My torch just disappeared into the blackness ahead of me.

I laid the usual marker at the split in the cave, then we progressed down the deep section and past the join in the cave. Just beyond there the cave dropped off once, then we came upon the large chamber where it dropped off to 45m. Before when we’d got here there’d been divers
there already lighting it up. Now I was the first upon it and it was in utter blackness – a great black hole inside the hill. It was quite a spectacle.

Before long Ryan and Ian where there too, illuminating the cavern. The formations were absolutely stunningly pretty, as before. Ian shot some video of us sitting on the ledges. Before long the Germans caught up with us and plummeted down through the chamber, continuing out of the passage at the bottom of the shaft. I was slightly jealous that they were continuing further and we weren’t, but only slightly. We continued to hang around enjoying the chamber.

In only a few moments the Germans were back though. We were still messing around and they were back up the chamber and heading out of the cave. I guess they were on a mission, and once completed they wanted out as fast as possible. Maybe they found the place where the scary cave monster lives.

We weren’t long behind them though. Our time in the cave was just about up. I thought I’d just managed to avoid stops; but as I ascended back up the chamber my VR3 clicked in to stops, followed shortly after by the Nitek. The VR3 stops were at 22m; it didn’t take long to get that shallow, so we stopped to do my first stops, 400m inside a cave. After they cleared we continued out; I was taking it very slowly. There was no time pressure to get us out quickly, so I took my time. Ian shot more video on the way out, and Ryan took some stills.

We went back up the shallow route – the remaining stops on both my VR3 and Nitek cleared before I got to the stop depths. The trip out took ten minutes longer than the trip in. We all took in as much of the beauty of the cave as we could. A favourite trick was shining your torch on the
ceiling and bouncing it off the air bubbles left there by the Germans.

Finally we regained the entrance and exited the cave, then floated gently down the river to the exit point.

Back at the river bank Ryan soon decided he didn’t need to do another dive that day. I agreed with him – it’d been a fantastic dive and a really good one to finish the week on. There was no need to do another, just for the sake of it. We were all pretty knackered in any case.

I fell asleep in the car on the way back home.