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Showing posts with the label Combe Laval

France, into the Vercors, 19th April, a solitary cave and a misty road

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We had lunch in the car park at the memorial and then set out to explore some more.  On the side of the road there was a direction arrow to a cave, the Grotte du Brudour, not a big commercial affair but just a hole in the cliff, so we stopped to investigate. By now it was raining pretty heavily so we put on our waterproofs and walked up the side of the stream until we came to the cave entrance. Alan explored inside but it was very dark with pools of water underfoot and our torch did not penetrate far. Finally we drove the Combe Laval, the heroic road that had first drawn us to the Vercors. This starts from a col known as the Col de la Machine and runs north to St Jean-en-Royans. The weather had really closed in and at first the visibility was non-existent, which added somewhat to the suspense of driving along this vertiginous passage, suspended nearly a thousand feet above the valley floor. But the mist did descend a little allowing me to take a picture of the classic