This weekend was the Spring Bio Festival. Bio is what they call organic produce here. It was pouring rain so I didn't take pictures but it was basically the same as last year's which you can read about here. After that my American friend Michele, her husband, and I went on an adventure to a cave 20 km outside of Besançon called Grotte D'Osselle.
The cave was discovered in the 13th century by Romans on the hunt for gold. In the 15th century, long after all the gold was mined out, it became a tourist attraction due to it's magnificent colors. Iron, manganese, copper, and bauxite ore all cross one another in this cave creating stone rainbows, adding red, orange, blue, and green to your more typical cave colors of neutral tones. It is, along with the Antiparos in Greece, the oldest cave system to become a tourist attraction. In the 1700's the passages were even widened to allow women in their gowns room to enter, and balls, banquets, and concerts were held in the cave. Festivities ended during the Revolutionary War, however, and the dry sections of the cave became refuge for refractory priests.
In the 1800's, William Buckland began paleontological excavations in search for Jurassic stones. In fact, the term "Jurassic" came about because this department of France, Jura, was where rocks of this age were first studied. Jura is a department of the region of France called Franche-Comté. It is right next to the department I live in, Doubs, which is also part of Franche-Comté. This cave system spans both the Doubs and Jura department and you get to cross the border while taking the underground tour. While Buckland was digging around, he found two complete skeletons of the extinct cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, of the Pleistocene era. Further digging has revealed about 3,000 more skeletons, 15 of those being complete, though they have since been stolen. Apparently paleontology is a cut-throat business. Cave bear numbers started dwindling about 50,000 years ago and became extinct 24,000 years ago due to pesky parasitic mammals called humans who selfishly hogged all the caves and also tended to use them for odd rituals to things called gods.
While the gallery spans almost 4 miles, only the first 1300 yards (a little under one mile) is open to the public. The tour is on a concrete pathway with gentle slopes and a few steps here and there. There is a small section where the ceiling is low and one must crouch and walk at the same time for maybe 10 or 15 feet but in general this cave system is perfect for a beginner's introduction to the underground world and is easy on kids, the unfit, and those with "mild to moderate" disabilities. If you only use a cane or walking stick on occasion, you will be fine.
I took some pictures but they're not the greatest since there isn't a good light source.