Emergence du Russel is a large impressive cave that starts in the bed of the River Céle as a clean washed passage of about 150 metres in length and with a cross-section at least the size of a double garage door. It then splits into two passages: one tunnel stays shallower at about 10 m depth whilst the other runs broadly in the same direction dropping repeatedly until it reaches around 18m. The two passages rejoin (making a nice round-trip for those new to cave diving) and, 300 m from the entrance, the cave takes the first of two dramatic plunges, eventually descending in a spectacular cavernous rift to about 45 m. To swim this far takes a round-trip of getting-on for an hour but for the members of the church of scootering in our party, emblazoned with the words "Forgive me father for I have finned", this is a trifling undertaking. From this point the entrance is getting towards half a kilometre away and the dive is increasingly technical, descending first to about 50 odd metres fairly soon, then, after some time to as much as 77 m before beginning to ascend and eventually entering into another rift that towers to a dry section of cave nearly two kilometres from the start. The whole trip through is a serious expedition of several hours and has been made by only a handful of people ever. In the last year sumps beyond this, running to more than 4 km in total, have been pushed by British divers Rick Stanton and Jason Mallinson.
Trou Madame is a short walk down a track following a dry tributary river of the Lot to a large cave entrance. This popular cave narrows-down to an entrance pool where you need to stoop. The whole cave system is a series of multiple sumps of varying length, all quite shallow at less than 15m depth and often with overhead pockets of airspace making an excellent training site. This system was explored as early as 1979 to nearly 2.5 km. The scalloped and knarled rock formations make it a favourite for photographers.
Fontain de St George is where some of the first penetrative cave dives were achieved in France. It is in the Dordogne Valley, near to Montvalent. The sump pool is large and picturesque, some 30m in diameter, and only a short distance from the car. The cave starts in the bottom of the resurgence pool at about 10m depth and descends at a steep 45 degree angle over a cobble and gravel slope with a low ceiling that hangs-down in a series of ridges giving the impression of gummy, mouth-like gaps. This passage can be a little awkward at times averaging about 2 metres high by 5 m wide but once you escape from it at near to 30 m depth, the passages are wide and open, even cavernous at times. Parts of this sump can be a bit gloomy on account of banks of silt but it gets gradually shallower before surfacing after a third of a kilometre in a chamber called Salle de Lavaur. The second sump passage is spacious and continues for another third of a kilometre before getting complicated by descending to more than 70m then surfacing into dry passage at over a kilometre from the start. Beyond this are more explored sumps that have taken teams of thirty people to push. After several kilometres the waters flowing through the system are known to connect with the show cave 'Gouffre de Padirac': a substantial challenge!
The following describes of three of the best known sites near Les Pégouriés, with acknowledgement to scubatravel.co.uk
Les Pégouriés is situated within very easy reach of several Lot and Célé cave-diving sites, some well known, others less so. Cave-divers are welcome and we can meet the need for things like extra power points for recharging and adequate space for drying out kit, as well as for comfortable, affordable accommodation.
A local cave...
Back to Activities
Contact us