It’s 6.00am on a Friday morning and my alarm goes off, I hit snooze for 5mins but I can already hear my host moving around the house and no doubt he’s been up for at least an hour already getting some last minute work done. I’m lying in my sleeping bag in the front room at John Volanthen’s house before we go off to France for a long weekend. Travel Friday, dive Saturday, dive Sunday and then drive home in the small hours of the morning – that is the way John operates and I was joining him for this trip where he would attempt to extend the exploration of an underwater cave called the Frais Puits.

It takes about 11 hours to get to our hotel in the town of Vesoul but the journey seems to go quickly as John and I talk almost constantly about diving, life and the universe. Our hotel has kindly been booked by our host Sylvain and after a dinner of pizza and beer and lots more conversation about diving we settle down for the night.

The visibility is absolutely zero so I’m glad when the thin line we’ve laid is tied into the thicker permanent line. After 35m of seeing nothing I emerge at the first junction in crystal clear water. Our route is to the right however and I can see where John has gone by the patches of Silt in the water. The passage is small compared to the other large European sites I’ve visited in the Lot and I’m frequently bumping and scraping my rebreather case on the roof – wondering how John has managed to scooter in here. The entrance series of the cave is also shallow and controlling buoyancy on a rebreather at 5-6m is a bit awkward. A couple of junctions later on I reach the ‘Gallery Mort’ – a static section of the cave which goes nowhere. John’s route branches off from here and he reaches the 1100m point before calling it a day. I have a look at the Gallery Mort – and get about 500m from the entrance in total, when the static branch final reaches surface again.  

That night we’ve been invited to Sylvain’s for dinner. We sit down to a meal with him and his family – they are fantastic hosts and we have an excellent evening. Even the fact that I speak very little French doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem and we manage conversation about all sorts of things – trying not to talk too much about cave diving and bore his wife and family!  

Sunday is the big day for us, we meet Sylvain at the cave early but the Frenchman is already there with most of his gear down at the entrance. John and I kit up – it feels slicker and faster today, and get on our way. I’m happy to go in last again as I’ll probably be out first – Sylvain is pushing the down stream end and he had a 1200m dive to do whilst John has 1600m to travel to reach the upstream end. My personal objective is to get 700-800m in, where the cave drops down to about 30m. The entrance series feels easier today, now that it is familiar and soon I’m nearing the junction where I left the main flow on Sunday. Suddenly though I see John’s scooter tethered to the line – it doesn’t make sense, unless he’s had a problem with it and had to ditch it. After 56minutes I’ve reached the 805m line tag and a depth of 30m in a large pleasant passage where I turn for home. John is somewhere ahead of me and by the time he emerges to the surface he’ll have swum something like 2900m (his scooter did have a problem). I get out in about 50mins and clear my gear from the entrance pool, just in time to return with my camera and catch firstly Sylvain and then John emerging. Both of them were successful and added line to the current limit of exploration – just how much is not for me to say here. John’s exploration report will be in the CDG newsletter and I’ll leave Sylvain to publish his own material.

The final end to the trip saw John and I reach his house in Bristol at 4.30am on Monday morning, after an enforced wait at Eurotunnel. Overall an excellent long weekend in France.