A visit to the underground watercanal "Spéléodrome"

Last saturday I visited an underground watercanal in Northern France "Speleodrome" together with speleofriends of our club ( Jan Theunissen, Paul van Zandvoort, Geert Coppen and Emmy Rodler). They helped me with taking pictures. A few weeks later I visited this system again with friends from other speleogroups. The system was build after the French German war in 1870. The town Nancy had a drinkingwater problem after the town grew with more than 60% after the war. The town decided to dig a watercanal that would solve the towns problems. The system is 4873 meter long and has 1769 meters of sidecalleries. After 26 years of use (1973) the town decided to close it down. In the '90's USAN from Nancy got the uppertunity to use it for speleopurposses. After they cleaned the system they started using it since. Down below is a map from the system in blue. We entered the system in Puits de La Vierge (a 63meter pit, 70 meter rope). At the bottem you follow the main gallerie downstream.

The most beautyful part of the system is between Puits de La Vierge and Puits de la Haute Borne. This part took us more than 2, 5 hours. On the way there was a lot to see.

To fill the canal with water they drilled holes in the ceiling. Some of them are very nice.

The water was not deep (around 20 cm). At some places you could see that there is a lot of iron in the underground.

The system is known for its "cavepearls". They are not really pearls but look the same. Some of them are red.

For photograhers it is a special place. There is to much to see for one visit.

After a few hours we had to go to a lower level (because of changes in the groundlayers).

After the stairsways after 20 minutes we came to a crossing. Here you go right to Puits de Clairlieu. The exitpoint. The trip took us 5 hours including photography. After we changed we went to the café to drink something together with Christophe. It was a special experience! Thanks Christophe!