The Madeleine cave

Among the places not to be missed in the Ardèche region, you must visit the Madeleine cave. In the same vein as the cave of Psychro, in Crete, this cave can be visited and is arranged in an intelligent way. During our visit, we were lucky enough not to come across many people, which we greatly appreciated.

The visit starts with an almost interminable descent (about 65 meters to go down), via a staircase with an incalculable number of steps (we are too lazy to count them). As we went down we felt the air getting cooler, and the temperature dropping a few degrees.

Once inside the cave, our first room named "Salle de l'Escure" clearly makes us want to eat. Why do we want to eat? Well, because the concretions naturally shaped by the years in a regular way remind us of a famous dessert. Do you recognize it too?

We pass different rooms, each one bigger than the other (the crib, the room of the bones), to arrive at the Chaos room with its extraordinary dimensions: 50m high and 30m wide, a real underground cathedral!

The place is really fascinating! As much by the concretions, by the stalactites, the stalagmites, but especially by the lighting which was carried out, and which puts all the more the accent on the size and the beauty of the place.

During the visit, our guide brings us in front of a succession of natural basins dug by the water over time. We were already amazed by the beauty of the place at that moment, but our wonder was even more accentuated when the lights of the cave were all turned off, to give way to a lighting of the basins accompanied by a bewitching music.

To sum up this visit, I would say that it is a place out of time. When you walk through the door, you enter the past, and you feel small. Very small. There is this je ne sais quoi which makes the atmosphere mystical, and which for my part left me a very good memory that I had to tell.

To do without hesitation!