Fontain de St George is where some of the first penetrative cave dives were achieved in France.

Fontain de St George is where some of the first penetrative cave dives were achieved in France. It is in the Dordogne Valley, near to Montvalent. The sump pool is large and picturesque, some 30m in diameter, and only a short distance from the car. The cave starts in the bottom of the resurgence pool at about 10m depth and descends at a steep 45 degree angle over a cobble and gravel slope with a low ceiling that hangs-down in a series of ridges giving the impression of gummy, mouth-like gaps. This passage can be a little awkward at times averaging about 2 metres high by 5 m wide but once you escape from it at near to 30 m depth, the passages are wide and open, even cavernous at times. Parts of this sump can be a bit gloomy on account of banks of silt but it gets gradually shallower before surfacing after a third of a kilometre in a chamber called Salle de Lavaur. The second sump passage is spacious and continues for another third of a kilometre before getting complicated by descending to more than 70m then surfacing into dry passage at over a kilometre from the start. Beyond this are more explored sumps that have taken teams of thirty people to push. After several kilometres the waters flowing through the system are known to connect with the show cave \'Gouffre de Padirac\': a substantial challenge!

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