Hanging over the empty, black void on a spider’s thread, the sequence of events which brought me here are careering through my head like a train-crash. A schoolboy error, nothing more. So foolish. And my annoying inability to admit that sometimes I am wrong. Oh yea, and that foolish ego-driven bravado. We’re all young once. I just prayed silently that I’d live to get a little older.

With hindsight, of course I know what “spéléo” means. It simply hadn’t cropped up in the French course that I’d just finished. I saw the ropes and harnesses, karabiners and helmets and assumed this was a climbing club. If I’d looked a moment longer before plunging in headlong, I’d have seen the acetylene lamps and the tell-tale, all-pervading mud that I’d later appreciate as part and parcel of a caver’s life.

I’d come to Marseille not only for the prestige of studying at the Grande Ecole but for the lifestyle. I’d just done two tough years of Chemistry at York Uni and wanted a bit of spice back in my life. I could speak French (after a fashion) and wanted to travel a while before I finished my degree and joined the Army. With the Calanques in my back garden, I was going to have a great time climbing and trekking. Oh, and do a bit of studying too, to keep my tutors happy.

But I hadn’t joined a fucking climbing club, had I?

The Spéléo Club de Marseille (SCM) is part of a large, traditional organisation called the Club Alpin Français or CAF. It is a family oriented affair with fathers, sons, daughters, cousins and friends. Everyone knows everyone. And they were so damned welcoming it caught me off-guard.

In blissful ignorance, I agreed to come out on a beginners trip, thinking it would be on a nice mountain-side somewhere. When they later gave me a list of kit that I’d need to bring, the penny dropped. Wellington boots?

I used to be scared of huge heights, and that fear was painstakingly converted into a healthy respect. My heart still flutters when I’m perched on the edge of a big drop, but it’s tightly controlled now. As the Parachute Regiment rightly says: “Knowledge dispels fear.”

But looking down into the sucking darkness that is trying to envelop me, there is nothing I can draw on. No experience, no knowledge. I feel nauseous.

Some acrobat has gone on ahead of me, putting up the ropes which seem to defy the laws of common sense, if not physics. Trust your skills and your equipment: it is safe. It doesn’t look it. Is that knot meant to be that loose? Are you sure he tightened that bolt?

Don’t look down. I’m not afraid of heights any more. But, it is now clearly evident, I am scared of depths. I can’t see anything below me other than a tiny pin-prick of light some twenty metres below which scarcely illuminates his face. Nothing! Shit.

Other cavers behind me mumble. “Why is this prick taking so long to move?” My French isn’t that good right now, but I can understand their tone if not their vocabulary.

I go to take a deep lung-full of air, but realise that I’d already been holding my breath for a good minute. Get a fucking grip.

I screw my eyes shut, lean forward and push away.