It's big network as many of us know. Full of great little highlights - the sculptures, the paintings. the general ambience.
Now lets tear all that up and start again. A trip to one very specific area. The Val de Grace underground - a minor maze of open quarry cavities underneat the hospital where the "all original" explorer worked. Philibert Aspairt went for a wander back in November 1793. His remains, we are told, turned up 11 years later.
So... let's go to Val de Grace.
The first and most shocking thing... the distance. We headed north to check a possible exit. All good. We can all fit through what we eventually called "the letterbox". Distance so far? 4km. Underground. I'm rubbing the limestome dust out of my hair as I type.
Then.... another 2km.... we're on the west and have to get to the east. The crawls are now getting silly. At one point our only route is to do two crawls, nasty long ones.
Eventually, we are looking for the hole in the wall. The one we missed last time. After a (me) comedy entrance that was otherwise uneventful (markr and OT)... finally we get in there.
And of course, we had to find "The Lost Arch"...
Now lets tear all that up and start again. A trip to one very specific area. The Val de Grace underground - a minor maze of open quarry cavities underneat the hospital where the "all original" explorer worked. Philibert Aspairt went for a wander back in November 1793. His remains, we are told, turned up 11 years later.
So... let's go to Val de Grace.
The first and most shocking thing... the distance. We headed north to check a possible exit. All good. We can all fit through what we eventually called "the letterbox". Distance so far? 4km. Underground. I'm rubbing the limestome dust out of my hair as I type.
Then.... another 2km.... we're on the west and have to get to the east. The crawls are now getting silly. At one point our only route is to do two crawls, nasty long ones.
Eventually, we are looking for the hole in the wall. The one we missed last time. After a (me) comedy entrance that was otherwise uneventful (markr and OT)... finally we get in there.
And of course, we had to find "The Lost Arch"...
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