Grotte de Caramen

When Linda and I first started visiting the Dordogne, back in the 90s, we acquired a copy of Pierre Vidal’s Cavernes en Périgord (second edition, 1987). In 2007, after one of those plans hatched on the back of several bottles of red wine, we bought a plot of land in the Coly valley and had a house built. At about the same time, we went on a hunt for a nearby cave, mentioned on page 139 of Vidal’s book, Grotte de Caramen. The description was a bit vague and, being French, there were no useful (or indeed any) map co-ordinates. But A mons de 6 km a l’Est de Montignac, en tete du thalweg passant au Sud du village de Drouille” seemed followable, especially as Drouille is no more than a hameau of just a few houses.

Nigh on 20 years later, we were still looking! We traipsed up and down the valley many times, accompanied by more-or-less willing friends who were visiting, but never found it. grottomap.org, does show it, but on open land on the wrong side of Drouille. Grottomap is mostly bloody useless, anyway, it shows several more caves in the surrounding fields which are most certainly not there and never have been.

Fast forward to Autumn last year when Linda is chatting to a couple of our neighbours, who have lived in the village all their lives. Gilles had heard of it and said he’d ask around. The upshot was that in December we boarded his 4×4 and trundled down a dubious track to follow the instructions he’d been given by the landowner. These started with “look for the oak tree” (in an oak wood!) take 14 paces back up the track and then follow the animal track up the right-hand side of the valley.” And there it was!

It’s a nice cave, with some roomy passages and a couple of crawls which we weren’t dressed to follow. There’s a bit of graffiti, so Linda had things to look at, and there’s meant to be some Palaeolithic stuff but it wasn’t obvious. In all we covered about 100-120 m of passage with more beyond where we stopped. Gilles said that the landowner would be happy for us to return so we will, with full kit and surveying gear.

–Graham