Into The Darkness
Canal tunnels are dark inside. This is the entry to the Blisworth Tunnel.
It’s one and three quarter miles long, and really dark in there. That little spot of light you see at the end of the video was not the end of the tunnel, it was a boat coming the other way. We did not hit it very hard.
Paula was driving for this one, so I got to take pictures and videos from the bow, while dodging the water that was dripping, or in some cases cascading, from the roof. There are ventilation shafts that go straight up every half a mile or so. This is the view straight up one.
That greenery was on our boat and is not part of the tunnel. No it’s not true that if you stand at the bottom of a deep well in daytime you can see the stars. That was first claimed by Aristotle in 300+ BCE. Let me tell you a secret: Aristotle had never been down a well in his life. He just made that shit up. He thought he was so clever that he didn’t have to actually have to test his ideas against reality. The funny thing is that for many hundreds of years people believed things because Aristotle had said them, which makes most of humanity even more stupid than he was.
The tunnel was partially rebuilt in the 1980s, and was used to experiment with materials that were later used in the Channel Tunnel. The folks who built the Chunnel were smart enough to test out their ideas before committing to them, unlike Aristotle.
Before we traversed the tunnel, we took a walk around the village of Stoke Breurne. There are some charming houses there.
Sold! We missed a chance to buy that one.
Not thatched, but still handsome.
This one is thatched, with extra bonus straw animals.
Okapi.
Kangaroos.
Water Buffalo.
Yes, I know they look like squirrels and hares and foxes these days, but you should have seen them when they were new.
There are some nice gardens, too.
And one of those churchy thingys.
Paula and I could not agree on this tombstone carving.
She thought it was a sheep, but I’m convinced it’s a horse, because a sheep wouldn’t be carrying an umbrella.
One thought on “Into The Darkness”
A bit harsh on Aristotle, who wasn’t much of a physicist but was a red-hot biologist who liked nothing better than dissecting anything that moved, which is probably why his pupil Alexander decided after a while it was safer to invade Afghanistan. He does say that some people sometimes see stars from the bottom of wells (though he doesn’t actually specify in daytime), but it’s not in one of his physical treatises but in the context of a discussion of what you can learn about vision by dissecting animal eyeballs. Sir John Herschel, who had rather less excuse, fell for this one as well; see http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1983QJRAS..24..246H for a collection of historical testimonies, a physicist’s demonstration why they all have to be utter bobbins, and a rather unconvincing attempt to explain what all these troglodytic observers may have been mistaking for stars.