Grotte de Villaniere

The entrance, small (1 x 0.8 m), leads into a sloping gallery that quickly becomes spacious (small lateral offshoots) and leads to a vast funnel-shaped chamber where a descent path interspersed with steps has been laid out in the concretion-covered floor.

To the southwest and higher up arrives a section of gallery that has the particularity of having its ceiling and one side entirely built. This gallery, now choked, must have emerged on the hillside. Below the gallery, an offshoot leads into a chamber barred by a collapse. To the north, it continues as a descending conduit, an ancient river bed, blocked after 20 metres.

The large chamber continues as a clayey gallery that leads to a new chamber, the base of a now-closed pit, whose floor plunges south to a low point at -21 m. In line with the incoming conduit, a small gallery ends at a clay choke after 10 metres. Between the blocks of the chamber, a blind P 6 leads into an ascending pocket parallel to the north wall of the chamber.

Above the window, one can climb about ten metres to reach the blocked top of the chimney at +9 m (numerous roots). Halfway up, a shaft communicates with the second part of the cavity.

At the base of the P 9, two passages lead to a section of horizontal gallery, often double, containing a dried-up stream bed ending at -22 m on a scree slope (draught) coming from a lateral chamber marking the bottom of the cave. This second part contains numerous side branches, including the one that gives rise to the stream bed and leads to an upper pocket. It is in another side branch, dug into the sediments, that the low point of the cave is found at -23.5 m.

An upper pocket of the second part of the cavity contains small clusters of aragonite.

a conduit descending to the north is an ancient river bed, blocked after 20 metres. In the second part, a section of horizontal gallery contains a dried-up stream bed.

By climbing the north wall of the large chamber for a few metres (slippery holds), one reaches a window that gives access to the second part of the cave via a P 9 with several steps.