Grotte de Villars

Well, we started the day the day off with a bit of a sleep in...I woke up at just after 10am and grabbed a shower, by that time Lesley was up and about.....hey, we are on holidays!

We had a late breakfast, or a brunch. There was no rush today as we planned to visit the famous caves at Villars, and they were not opening to 2pm.

We purchased our tour tickets for 16 euros for the two of us. There were just a couple of problems....the tour was in French, but we were handed English written tour sheets that gave us information about each of the six caves we would be visiting....the second problem was the most upsetting...no cameras!! So all of the photos in this post are "borrowed" from tourist web sites...but we did see all of these.

It was quite easy to move around the caves as the floor was all non-slip coated and there were plenty of hand rails.

Easy To Move Around

The caves are quite spectacular with their Stalactites and Stagnites, some caves had very big ones while others had thousands of small ones, but types looked incredible.

Amazing Formations

In Some Places Stalactites and Stagnites Join Together

As we moved through the caves, some had special light and music shows...really added to the atmosphere.

Each Cave Looked Amazing

In a couple of caves we came across prehistoric artc that was thousands of years old. The first painting of a bison and sorcerer is one of the few which portrays a human in paleolithic parietal art. Completed using manganese dioxide as a black pigment, it has retained the black colouration because this part of the wall has not received a coating of calcite.. one of the few paintings to retain its original colours.

Prehistoric Art - The Sorcerer and The Bison

The next painting was also painted in manganese dioxide, and has been coated over the years with calcite, which has the effect of making the black manganese oxide appear blue.

Prehistoric Art - The Horse and Horse Head

The final cave was very spectacular with thousands of Stalactites hanging from the cave roof and has quite rightly been given the name of The Candle Room, it looked amazing.

The Candle Room Cave

We had a great time here and it was something very different to as what we have done to date, well worth the visit.

 

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