Caving

As I type this, our 11th day in France is nearing its end. Scheduled for our last week is a trip out St. Emillion (largest underground church in Europe as well as 90+ wine vineyards), Rocamadour, more canoeing, a France style Heritage Park, castles and caves and of course more relaxing in our beautiful home. One popular at home activity has been dipping in our pool. I say dipping because swimming implies the person in the water stays in the water longer than 4.2 seconds. The water is colder than Javert so we jump in, make a scene, and then jump out (narrowly escaping hypothermia). 37 seconds later we do this again giggling like school girls the whole time. We convinced mamma school girl to join us today (we told her the water was warmer than usual) and to her credit she jumped in not once, not three times but TWICE. Her reaction was worth the cost of this cottage. The downside is its possible she no longer trusts the man she married. The truth is, I’ve been nice to Ang “don’t call me Angela unless you’re the government” ie (I just made this nickname up now) - just ask her colorful new half llama’s wool half cotton all comfort sweater I bought her from the market.

Speaking of taking care of my lady, we let Angela sleep in the other day while the kids and I had daddy-kids time. I told them it was a surprise (mainly because I had no plan) but we ended up weaving down the D47 towards Commarque Castle. When we arrived the parking lot was empty so we scoffed at no one in particular - happy we were the first ones there. The castle is a 600m walk from the lot. When we arrived at the castle we were greeted by a bunch of no one. Everything was boarded up and there was a yellow signed nailed to the door saying something important in French. We guessed it included the words “closed and moron tourist.” My first thought which I somehow said out loud was “you know, this castle would be easy to breach, we could just scale that wall and then. . .” Maddie, the adult on this trip, talked me out of it, so I got down off the wall, then helped Lex and Ethan off too. We walked around the outside for a bit, admiring its castlenicity and then got bored and started to head back. Or did we?

INSERT SUSPENSE

Across the moat (there wasn’t actually a moat but it sounds better) we noticed a hill in the trees with some serious cave potential. Knowing France’s reputation for caves I recommended the others follow. Arriving at the hill we began to walk around it, through the trees and eventually swampy marsh wetness. Maddie was done at this point – never been a fan of the swamp. I thought about aborting but something deep inside and in front of me urged me forward. With Maddie on my back we continued through the marsh until I saw the reason for my urging. About 13 feet up on the hill was the opening of a cave hidden from common men.

I ran towards, and when we arrived I quickly saw the remnants of a medieval staircase (jagged rocks inserted sporadically into side of hill). I encouraged the kids to- climb kids climb- ignoring Maddie’s caution for the greater good. Reaching the mouth of the cave I looked inside then turned and said “I’ll go in and check it out, if I’m not back in 5 minutes, call the police.” My clever joke set me back 5 minutes as I had to convince Ethan I was kidding, of course I’m kidding son, daddy would never . . . die in a cave.” We headed in with the light from my Eddie Bauer watch as our guide. It was the most unbelievable experience. This cave was the real deal. The poor kids were extremely nervous but had followed me in anyways because the thought of being eaten by a bear outside the cave was worse than the thought of being eaten by a bear with dad, inside it. (No bears in these parts grandparents).

We walked for a few minutes (yes I actually could stand up) winding around, crouching, crawling on our bellies at some points until I killed the experience by accidently saying out loud AGAIN “hey look, bones.” (There was a tiny pile of bones, remnants of a small animal) The crying began and I, the light bearer, was forced to abort -escorting the whimpering kids back outside. I tried to go back in again as things had just gotten interesting but the kids were too freaked calling out “dad, DAD, DAD, every 3 seconds. I aborted again, forgoing my dream of a great archaeological discovery. As we walked back to the car the kids acted like they weren’t really scared, saying things like “we should have gone farther, the cave wasn’t that scary.” Ha ha, kids are great and so was the day even if some other dad gets to discover the cave paintings.