Duck or canard?

Part deux of the French experience

What could top celebrating Burns night for a French teenage experience of Derbyshire life? A trip down a dark cave and scrambling into a boat might not be everyone's cup of tea…but that was what we did.

We drive though the pretty villages of the Hope Valley to the destination of Castleton, famous for it’s Blue John, stalactites and stalagmites. OK, who can tell me how you tell the difference? I was taught stalactites need to hang on tight to the ceiling, and stalagmites need to be mighty strong to build up from the ground. Oh yes - Blue John is actually blue…I’ll be testing you later.

I find a guidebook to the speedwell cavern in French…result. I give this to Clara and the French contingent gather round and read about what was to be expected for the next hour. I find the guide to ask if he knows any French…he doesn’t (except bon-jaw N.B. his accent was way worse than mine.)

We don protective headgear and stumble en masse down the 900 steps to the awaiting boat. In which we are treated to a ride in the cold dark tunnel, accompanied by the guide telling us about the history of mining in a fairly strong Derbyshire accent. Not sure our French students will have covered coal mining, child exploitation and controlled explosions in their English lessons; at least they have the book. There was a particularly low bit of the tunnel and we were encouraged to ‘duck’. I shouted ‘canard’ to alert the French. Apparently its not the same! Amused my fellow English passengers though.

We get out of the boat, we admire the cavern, we take photos, we stare at our shoes, we take a few more photos having convinced ourselves that there is definitely no 3G signal and clamber into the next boat with relief. The tour guide has some funny stories about previous questions from tourists - for example “How many undiscovered caverns are there?” and “Can I take my hat off, I keep banging my head” And I thought the duck joke sank!

Back on the surface, we decide to go for a hot chocolate and perhaps some cake, we felt we deserved it. However, there were eight adults and 10 children in our party. So the Castleton carnival begins. I’m not sure why we ALL felt the need to traipse into every cafe, establish that the remaining one table and three chairs was not sufficient for our party, cause a log jam in the doorway then tramp to the next establishment, but that was what we did. I am sure we are still the talk of the village. At last, a restaurant agreed to make us a hot drink and feed us cake - phew!