A Grotty Sergent

Rich wanted a day off. So I took him caving!

Grotte du Sergeant. Image: Christine Grosart

Somehow over the last decade I have managed to avoid this very pleasant little cave. I must have misread the instructions because 300m walking later we had not found a 'large porch' - or anything resembling a cave.

This is not unusual. I have been up many garden paths, gum trees and on several spectacular wild goose chases in this region. It is hot, scrubby bush bashing and the best you can hope for is some sort of cairn, bit of paint (which could mean anything really - like, a really long GR route.....) or a couple of contradictory arrows painted on trees.

There was some pleasant scrambling on grippy limestone river bed with dried up plunge pools and lots of lizards, before we finally got to a 'combe' where we couldn't go any further - the cave had to be here.

It was - a vertical but not difficult scramble up the cliff face!

Once in the cool entrance, we wandered off down pretty but not spectacular dry fossil cave with a sandy floor. It probably does resurge in exceptional weather, but it hadn't in a very long time.

I took the opportunity to take some photos with my new camera and see how I got on. I'm reasonably happy with them, especially given there were only two of us.

I get the feeling this is the Herault's version of 'Goatchurch' - but much nicer and would be a good starter cave for any led groups I bring here in the future. It has nice little climbs, abseils to protect the vertical bits and pretties. Plus a great view from the entrance.

Well worth the afternoon out.