The Ritchie's Caves

I haven't mentioned this in my blogs yet but this region is loaded with caves. The hills are mostly made of limestone. Because of that, people have been been digging out holes here for at least centuries. The people dug out caves to make stones for homes and other buildings. these caves are extremely common around here. If you have a hill, you probably have a cave. People often use them as storage places. But it's also quite common that people live in them too. In the back of the house here in Martray are a bunch of caves which I have posted.You can see from the fireplace that people once lived in the cave. You can also see that sometimes they collapse - I don't think that is very uncommon. There is a another 2 complexes of caves here in the back yard but they are so overgrown that you can't get to them - also there is an open well somewhat covered that drops 20 feet but no one seems to know where it is.

The entrance after the entrance - don't ask me



You ask well what's inside the caves? old junk of course





The fireplace of the people who lived here



The collapse



The neighbor's cave



On the other side of the hill



This is Mr. Le Bris and his son. I was painting the other day on the other side of the big hill in front of our place when I met a boy and his father. They had recently been to the American southwest and invited me over for a drink. Ok it was cool across the board. He clearly ran a business with some sort of construction aspect. As it turned out, he is a plumber and electrician and had done all the work in our house. So he was in his cave with a couple of workers. He offered me some cider that his friend makes - which was very good i might add - and showed me the cave. This place was huge. It was the size of a mid-sized warehouse. True to the story, people had dug out the cave for stones for buildings. There was a small hole at the back of the cave something like 18" x 6" and he said that that hole was the part of an enormous natural chamber - which obviously had other entrances. He was incredibly kind and generous with his time and explanations of his property, his family and of course the cider. I went by today and got a picture of him and his son. If you need some plumbing or electrical work done in the Loir valley i'll put you in contact. I assume he might give some cave tours too.

I've promised to post some pictures of the houses that are caves. This is just one but there are tons of them around here. I'll try and get some more pictures of the troglodytes homes




Just so that you don't think i've stopped posting, I will be on vacation for a week