Brand swap

As a teenager I lugged around an aluminium army water bottle. After about an hour the water tasted of how I imagined mercury. I probably then swapped to plastic soda bottles; these became available at the time. Yes, reader, I'm old enough to remember these being introduced! Anyway; at some point, I think in my early twenties, I embraced modernity and bought a set of platypuses. You know, the lightweight, foldable water bottles. The more you drink from them the less space they take up in your bag. And they last. 

I had three. They were with me on many trips! I think they're a brilliant invention. but all good things come to an end, and the first died on Senja. We were doing our annual winter hike, and my platypuses were with me, even though only one has some thermal insulation. So on the last evening I had one of them in my clothes; that way I had water at hand, and it wouldn't freeze. I was tired that night, so I was also cold. And my feet hurt. That was when the seam of the bottle gave. I noticed something unpleasant, looked down, and saw icicles coming out of my trousers. Not good! And the second one started leaking on the even of a caving trip. One down. It went with me to Dovrefjell, but I have decided to retire it; it's clear that these bottles have reached the limits of their durability. And maybe it's better not to wait until it starts leaking.

 My two remaining platypuses. The small one has been underground with me several times; hence the colour.

 

Where the small one started leaking

 Where I think the big one will soon leak

So I bought two new bottles. The shop I went to for that purchase didn't have Platypuses; they sold Source. Does it matter? No. But I did get nostalgic when I realised the Platypus era had ended. In a way, they symbolised my change from army-surplus-equipped teenager to affluent, GoreTex-clad hiker (other brands are available). And that transition is now so long ago, almost all traces have now vanished. When packing for Dovrefjell I wondered how much of my equipment actually still stemmed from my time in the Netherlands: some fleeces, my sleeping bag, my mug... not much! Where did the time go?

One of the new bottles! A new era has begun.

Gay in Plymouth (and elsewhere)

When I lived in Amsterdam, the world was normal. When I went to Norway, something was missing. Gays! Or to be more politically correct: LGBT people. They must have been there! Why were they not seen by the untrained eye? And then I moved to England. The same story! Where are the gays? After four years I have met, as far as I am aware, only three people in that category. And what's worse; here in Plymouth, you meet a lot of casual homophobia. That bothers me.

The Dutch generally don't have a high regard for the level of gay rights in the UK, but I personally base that opinion on anecdote (no gay marriage, for instance) and personal experience. It's not as if I know much about the legal details or the historical background. And then there was a talk announced by Peter Tatchell. Peter who? Anglosaxons, I've noticed, know exactly who he is, but I hadn't heard of him. He turned out to be a British-Australian human rights activist. His focus is on LGBT issues, but he's campaigned for all sorts of other people at the receiving end of injustice. He would speak on the history of the gay rights movement in the UK. Of course I wanted to go!

The lecture theatre was practically full. One expects a higher percentage of gays in an audience like this than randomly on the street. So they do exist in Plymouth! And when Tatchell was introduced he got a warm applause.

Not a very good picture, but I was too busy listening and taking notes!

 He started off with the history of gay rights groups. He spoke of the early days; the fifties seem to have been a particularly bad time for, mainly, gay men. About a thousand men (gay sex among women seems not to have been illegal) were incarcerated for having gay sex every year. A famous one, I suppose as every Brit already knew (but not me), was Lord Montagu. Do read his story! All this inspired the foundation of the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS) in '58. This was a London-based group of the rich and powerful, who thought something needed to change. Which was certainly the case, but the people which would benefit most from such reform didn't feel represented by this society. Enter the North-West Homosexual Law reform Committee (NWHLRC) ('64); this was a proper grassroots organisations that actually had gay people in it. And they had effect: a landmark moment in LGBT rights in the UK was the Sexual Offences Act of '67, which decriminalised homosexual acts. Under certain circumstances. Tatchell explained how restricted this still was: he said the only time (male) gay sex was not an offense was if it took place between two consenting 21+ males, in the privacy of their own home, with the doors and windows locked, the curtains drawn, and nobody else present in the premises. Facilitating or seeking such encounters, strangely enough, was still illegal. And it only held for England and Wales; Scotland followed in '80 and Northern Ireland in '82. It's better than gay sex being illegal at all times, but one has to agree that this is hardly equality.

Enter the 80s. Another bad time! Tatchell explained that in these times, about as many men were in prison for gay sex (under the moniker of nasty phrases as "unnatural offences" or "gross indecency") as in the 50s. In the 80s? Dearie me! And he even counted 50+ men being murdered for being gay in the period '86-'91with the police looking the other way. There clearly was more work to do! So another HLRS-NWHLRC-like set of organisations was founded; the former called Stonewall UK ('89), named after the '69 riots in New York, and the other one called Outrage! ('90). The endless list of organisations might put some people off, but it does matter. For instance, he mentioned that if you have a rather law-focussed, intellectual group, and a provocative, loud one, this might give the former more chances to be heard by the mainstream - rather that then deal with the latter! In Dutch there is a great word for that: relnichten (riot faggots? It's clearly a nom de guerre). I don't think they have such a phrase in English...

And progress was made: Outrage! organised a mass kiss-in on Piccadilly Circus in '90. And that raised such publicity, in a good way, even before the event even happened, that they received a letter from the police that they would stop arresting people for displaying gay acts of affection in public an hour before the kissing started. Success! And the police seem to have kept their word.

And then changes happened fast. Age of consent for gay men lowered in '94 and again in 2001, gays allowed into the army in 2000, sex involving more than two men decriminalised in 2001, the right to adopt introduced in 2002 and civil partnership in 2003, and discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the provision of goods and services illegal in 2007. And then in 2013, the House of Commons backed gay marriage.

 A somewhat unrelated picture I took from his website (with permission): here we see Tatchell (right) protest against "section 5" which allows the police to prosecute people for words and behaviour they (and not necessarily anybody else) deem insulting. The fancy dress refers to a chap who was arrested for asking a mounted policeman "Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?"

So are we there yet? No! For one thing. Tatchell explained that the opposition often supports gay causes, but forgets about that as soon as they gain power. He mentioned that Labour had pulled that trick. The only reason why serious changes were still implemented during their time in power was that individuals, disappointed with government decisions, would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. And when they declare something unconstitutional (or otherwise wrong), the UK government has to give in. And now the UK is considering stepping out of the EU and distancing themselves from the ECoHR. If that happens, the UK can decide on policy on their own again. What would happen?

And gay marriage made it! Or has it? It passed through the House of Commons, but it still has to pass through the House of Lords. Not necessarily the most progressive body in the world. They probably won't dare block it, but they might cripple it with amendments. And why create a new law in the first place? The Marriage Act of '48 (or '49) does not state the two people engaged in the marriage have to be of opposite gender. That is only stated in the Matrimonial Causes Act from '73. Why not repeal that part of the '73 Act? Why need new legislation? Is that equality? And why can't straights get a civil partnership? Is that equality? 

Asylum seekers who flee countries like Uganda where being (perceived as being) gay is still lethally dangerous sometimes flee to the UK, as things are so much better here. But then, at the border, their sexual orientation is questioned. The UK is trying very hard to reduce immigration, and this seems to be an easy way to contribute to that. And I had already heard disturbing reports on the radio that gay asylum seekers have started, in their despair, to tape themselves having sex in order to "prove" their orientation. Any less explicit evidence seems to to be taken seriously. Imagine that...

And last but not least; there are still high numbers of bullying of gays in schools and elsewhere in society. The LGBT community seems to have a three times higher occurrence of psychological problems and suicide than the general population. And well, with the levels of homophobia (will I get stick for using that term? Some claim it technically means "fear of similarities") you do routinely encounter in this country, I can believe that. The UK aren't there yet! But they've sure come a long way...

South Bedford

"Do you have permission for this?" We had, actually. The man that asked didn't quite believe us, but when he was told the name of the actual person who had granted us that permission, he looked disappointed and slid away into the darkness again. We were gathering on a small parking lot south of Devon Great Consols; we would visit a modest mine today. I had not been there before.

We started with an 18th Century copper level. These old levels are just big enough for some 18th Century miner to pass through! And they might have silted up a bit since then. It was narrow and winding, but pretty. And there was some archaeology left. And a tiny little stope; they'd mined away an ore body of about half a meter thick and 3 meters high. Quite a contrast with the 4 meter by bloody far in every other direction, of the DGC trip just 2 days before. And we had to stop when we met a shaft. I threw a rock in: that thing was deep! we were frustrated we hadn't brought ropes and harnesses.

 

Lionel in the copper adit. Notice the very small timbering above his head! That's the lode.

 

Rick indicates what some rusty brackets would have been for

 

The shaft! Evidently used for garbage dumping. We wanted to get to the other side!

When we came out we headed straight uphill; looking for some not very successful tunnel from the 1940s. In the war, the British government got desperate for metals, and a small burst in mining ensued. It was yet another contrast; this tunnel was high, broad, and very short.

 The tunnel from the 1940s

we decided not to go back yet; somewhere, at the bottom of the hill, Rick knew yet another entrance. A badger-sized hole appeared at the side of the path. I didn't expect much; maybe 5 to 10 meters of crawling? But after the belly-crawling I was soon properly crawling, and soon after that I was wading through such deep water I regretted not having brought dry underwear. At some point I even encountered an obstacle; there was a flooded winze in the floor. I traversed across. Then I reached the end. And I could hear people behind me; I wasn't sure if everybody would be up for such a rat-hole, but they evidently were!

 

The bonus tunnel

The winze turned out to have claimed a victim: one of the guys had slipped while traversing he was wet to the collarbone... but it didn't spoil his mood.

After that adventure it was pub time. It took us a while to extract all our cars that were parked tetris-wise in the tiny area, but then we made it, yet again, to the Queen's Head. A good caving week!

Underwater filming

I'm not sure what the mainland is like, but here everybody is swooning hard over the most recent batch of David Attenborough programmes. Or over David Attenborough himself. Which goes together quite well with the various TV series. And everybody likes spectacular footage from nature. So the series Frozen Planet, Africa, and First Life are very popular, So when Plymouth University had invited the camera crew of "Africa" to give a presentation, I thought I'd be early. That would fill up soon! But my early wasn't early enough. I was turned away.

Then a talk was announced by Hugh Miller, the underwater cameraman of both Africa and Frozen Planet. And several other programmes. And this time, they made people reserve a place. I made sure I did that quickly! So this time I got in.

And I was glad I did. The cameraman turned out to be a PU alumnus. Less than ten years earlier he had been studying marine biology here. And now he was back. With good stuff.

He spoke of how you become an underwater cameraman: you start as a assistant. Which means you get to see all amazing scenes with the hind quarters of the actual cameraman in view, but the upside is that you have little responsibility. And if the filming is especially cumbersome (heavy camera) or dangerous, you might end up in front! He mentioned he had been filming sailfish with a high-speed camera.  That seemed to have been the first time such a camera was used underwater. Capacity was still low; he had four shots of two seconds. After that, it would take hours to upload the footage onto a computer. So you better choose well when you press that button! He said his rule of thumb was: hit it when you're really scared. It must have worked for him!

 

A sailfish. Source: Citron

When you then make the switch to being the cameraman proper, you end up with the responsibility. Og getting all the equipment to location. Airports seem not to like it when you show up with 89 cases of equipment...

You also are responsible for delivering the shots the producer wants. And for that, you rely heavily on scientists. He gave an example: for some programme, they wanted to film the first cuckoo (or something) that would arrive on Dartmoor in spring. And a scientist pointed them to the right tree, the right date, and the right time. Now that's service...

He then spent a lot of time telling us of making Frozen Planet. They had a little diving hut on an Antarctic ice shelf, over a hole drilled in the ice. And that hole, sometimes a 9m tunnel, was their entrance to another world. Where the light is strange, the animals too; everything, really. He spoke of the continuous soundtrack of whales and seals, and of the occasional habit of the latter to sneak up on you, to suddenly bark. Scaring the life out of you! Which is exactly the intention.

He also spoke of the shooting of the brinicle scene. For those who haven't seen it; a brinicle is a sort of brine-made ice stalactite, the results from freezing sea ice. the salt in the sea water doesn't freeze into the ice, so that ends up, highly concentrated, at the surface (so-called brine rejection). That brine is dense, so it sinks to the bottom. And where it does that, it freezes the water around it. So you get a cold arm reaching down to the bottom, killing everything that doesn't run away fast enough. When they saw these they didn't know what it was, nor did anybody else,but they were keen to film it. So they found a spot with many of these, recorded under what circumstances these things seemed to be active, put down a battery of lights and cameras, and left. And it worked! That scene is epic. Watch it here!

He had many more stories. About seals knocking over equipment, sea urchins that get ice in their spikes, get lifted onto the ice cover, end up inside it, and then end up in cross section when the Americans drill a hole for the camera crew... And of engineers getting meters and feet confused, and that leading to the waterproof housing of a 3D camera imploding... He talked for a long time, but none of us were bored! I think this guy is pretty much living the dream...

Deep down in Devon

My first SRT trip was in Wheal Fanny. And what an introduction that was! It's part of Devon Great Consols, and it was the biggest copper mine of its time. The main lode is very thick; they've mined away meters of material, which makes it very imposing. And such a wide lode also asks for very serious timbering; the like of this you won't find anywhere near. But I'd only been down the first serious drop. And I know there's more. So when Rick suggested an SRT  trip, as he felt like one, I suggested, among others, the deeper levels of Wheal Fanny. And the suggestion was taken over.

 

Paul and Rich waiting at 15 fathom level

When we reached 15 fathom level, where I'd been before, I took some time for pictures. The last times (to bolt a hole, and to explore it) I'd been there had been a while ago, and then I hadn't had much time for photography. The time before that I hadn't had much practice with underground photography. So this was my chance to try to document all this beauty!

 

Some of the timbering on 15 fathom level. The wiggly white line is Hugh's headlight when he walks through the view. 

 

The timbering is relatively solid, but there are gaping holes in it. Some of them lead further.

 

This composite picture shows the underside of the platform in the picture above. As you can see on that pic, it has rails; it must have carried heavy loads. But by now the planking is giving. 

From this level down, all was new to me. We dropped down to a ledge, from which even more of the main stope was visible. Very impressive, but very hard to take pictures of! From the ledge we went even deeper. That level had a bit of a scramble down to a puddle, and from there a another level on timbering, which was so bad I dropped down to the level below, which had thigh deep water. Hugh turned out to have just walked overhead...

Me taking a picture from 15 fathom level down to the folk on the ledge below. Alex is on the rope (second glare from the left), and the glare on the left is someone who is already down at the deepest level we visited.

 

Hugh on his way to the deepest level

When we got down to the deepest level I started out being flash monkey for Dave. He made amazing pics! But then we went into the direction where the others had disappeared to. We found Paul and Alex relaxing away, Rick and Richard muttering in the distance, and Ali trying to get from one to the other. It turned out that Rick had found a hole in the ground, had tried to bolt it, had run out of battery power for the drill, but had then seen Richard cross quite without it being bolted, had done it too, and invited people to join. So we did! There turned out to be several holes more, but it was all quite negiotiatable (that should be a word). So we went on! And found more main stope, imposing as ever. But somewhere along the stope it got narrow, and too deep to go on without yet another rope. Oh well. It was getting close to beer O'clock anyway. We turned back.

 

Me on the deepest level, next to a delightful ore chute

When I was freehanging in the stope, and the people behind me were nowhere to be seen, I had a try at on-rope photography. A rather unsuccessful one, unfortunately. But then the last bunch appeared, and I got myself out of that rope and out of their way. And soon I was washing my kit in the stream. It had to be done again at home; that stream was probably acid! But it got rid of the mud.. And then we were off to the Queen's Head.

 

The main stope seen from a small platform in the drop between near-surface an 15 fathom level

Me happily dangling from the rope

I'm not sure if I will ever go there there again. But now I've seen the bottom level! I can now safely move to York...

Manuscript rapid firing

If you plan a scientific project in such a way that it can be finished in time, you won't get it funded. So you have to promise the moon on a stick. If you indeed get the money, that's when the trouble really starts. Then you have to somehow deliver something that resembles the moon on a stick! But that tends to take time. I started my PhD in 2001; I'm not done publishing the results yet. I'm not done publishing the results from my time in Norway yet. And we're hardly getting started getting the results published of my first project in England; the one with the500 years of sea level change in the North Atlantic. One of the main issues was radiocarbon dating; when one batch of dates was in, we tended to be faced with new questions, which needed more dates to be answered. And applying for money takes time. Getting the analysis done too. So we are lagging behind, but not more than anyone with some sense of reality would expect.

 We all look like St Augustine (here by Botticelli) now: writing away....

Now we are in the middle of writing up; all four of us (Tasha, Antony, Roland and me) are writing at least one article now, all more or less at the same time. Tasha is ahead, with a review paper already having gone through the review process. I expect it to be accepted soon. And aside from that, we are quite actively slapping each other around the ears with draft manuscripts. Exciting times! I've seen Rolands draft on the four westernmost records, I've glimpsed Antony's paper on the Isle of Wight, and I've finished my Iceland first draft. With a bit of luck, skill and tenacity, 2013 will be the year when we spit out articles like there is no tomorrow!

Dovregubben

Did we see Dovregubben in Dovrefjell? The question was asked as a comment on my Dovrefjell posting. So did we? But what or who is Dovregubben? And who wants to know?

The last question is easily answered: Dovregubben wants to know! Which brings us to the second last question. Dovregubben is the pen name of my former office neighbour in Tromsø: Jesper Hansen. He blogs under this moniker, and he's the only person I know who blogs more than me. Do check out his blog, if you're not taken aback by the fact he uses Danish to express his thoughts. And not only do I still read his blog; he reads mine too. Hence his question, when I wrote about Dovregubben, of whether we had met this creature. So who is this, whom Jesper named himself after?  

Dovregubben is a character from Ibsen's work "Peer Gynt". He's a strong-willed troll king (are there any other troll kings?) He's the mountain king after which Grieg's composition of that name is named. And also the inspiration for Savatage's album of that title. Quite a popular character, evidently. (If you're willing to expand a bit on Dovregubben, Jesper, I'd be delighted!) He seems not to be from Dovrefjell but from Rondane, but let's not pick nits here. I had to look up what Dovrefjell even means; "dovre" seems to be a derivative of "dofrar" which means so much as "cleft". And nobody seems to know what cleft the whole area is named after.

If you know Jesper, you might not be too surprised about this moniker. And did we meet the original Dovregubben? Maybe! He seems to have kept an eye on Marijn, as he tried out a mountain pass...