The Cave of Lombrives (Le Grotte Lombrives)

Yesterday I went to the Cave of Lombrives, in Ussat-les-Bain (Ornolac), Ariege (the region).  It is about 110 km from Carcassonne, south and west of my adopted "home".  When I got to the cave, I was only about 25 miles from Andorra.  The geology of the Pyrenees is very interesting.  The Pyrenees are relatively "new" mountains (hence their jagged peaks); and all along the area of the mountains, there are these HUGE granite and limestone cliffs which got "thrown up" at the same time.  They seem very incongruous with the countryside around them.  It's not a gradual transition to mountainous territory, as in the Pacific NW.  You're just rolling along in gently rolling hills and suddenly, it's as if some huge giant had just put these big boulders in your way.  And I mean BIG--often 5-10 miles long.  One can easily see how the Pyrenees were a major barrier to people trying to cross from what's now France into what's now Spain, or vice versa--why the Romans, who were pretty adventuresome,  didn't try to cross them, for example.

The Cave itself labels itself as the "largest in Europe" though how they measure that is apparently controversial.  It has at least 8 caverns which one can see, with guided tours lasting from 1-7 hours.  I took the 1.5 hour tour, which lets you into 3 of the caverns.  Unfortunately, one cannot take photos, even with flash "off".  And, my camera battery seems to have gone dead, so I couldn't take photos of the massive granite faces of the cliffs, either.  But it was very interesting to be there.  I was very interested in the fact that they are NOT preserving the vapor-lock on the caverns, which means that the caverns will be "dead" in another few years--no living algae, fungus, etc.  America learned that lesson with Carlsbad Caverns in California--they opened them up to the public in the late 1940s, creating new wider openings, and the algae were dead within 10 years.  I was very impressed with the precautions taken by the folks who run/preserve Karchner Caverns in Arizona (east of Tucson).  They are careful to limit the number of daily visitors, put you into 2 vapor-lock chambers before you actually enter the caverns, all in the name of preserving the caverns as a "living" entity.  Good to know we've learned a few things over time!

The grisly part of the history of Grotte Lombrives is that, in 1325, the Inquisition walled up 521 Cathars in the walls of the caverns, still alive.  They show you the wall of rock, but they have never excavated the bodies.  Another fine example of what the human animal does to itself.  The weather yesterday, incidently, was grey and foggy around the caverns, and that developed into full-blown thunderstorms in Carcassonne last night.  Somehow, knowing the history of the place, that fog and chill wind was just right.  The grey clouds and wind are still with us this morning.  Still, we're having real summer here, as opposed to the Seattle area, where (I understand) it's still mostly rain. (Click on the location map, below, to see where the Cave is--where it says "Ariege, France".)