ShowCaveBlog

Showcaves.com has to do with underground. But we never heard the voice of the underground, other than in a metaphorical way. London Underground has a voice, and her name is Emma Clarke. She is a award winning BBC comedy writer and the freelance voiceover artist of the London Underground. It is her saying the famous Mind The Gap.

If you tested this link, you might have gotten a 404 error. The reason is simple, Emma Clarke told an interviewer lately she “…wouldn’t want to travel on the Tube and hear my voice over and over.” While that is easy to understand, the interviewer didn’t, or at least shortened it until the article contained the formulation that she didn’t take the Tube because she didn’t like it. As a result she was fired, or – as she was a freelancer – will not get more assignments. The story could end like this, but now the power of the internet arose, her dismissal has sparked an international media frenzy and her website recieved nearly 90,000 yesterday, which caused the collapse of the website.

We will see if London Underground will reinstate her as the voice of the Underground. However, we would recommend to wait a few days and then hear the spoof Tube announcements on her website.
Ticket to Rile? Furor as London Underground Makes Space for New Voice

Of course, you may say, what they play is called underground rock or simply underground. But they now declared themselves to be the most underground band of all time, because they played underground underground. Last week they performed in the Erlebnisbergwerk Sondershausen, an abandoned salt mine in former German Democratic Repubik. They played in a salt dome 650 metres below the surface. 450 concert goers were a sort of elite, the tickets were not sold but raffled. The attendees also hat to wear overalls and yellow hard hat, an obligation of the Bergamt (board of mines), which gave the conert its final underground touch….

Have a look at the teaser on YouTube:

YouTube – Queens Of The Stone Age – Salt Mine Teaser

This news has nothing to do with show mines, but it is pretty interesting, so I decided to make an exception.

Xinjiang province is the second largest coal producer of coal in China after Shanxi province. The second largest coal field of Xinjang with an estimated amount of 651 million tons of coal, producingan 50 million tons of coal annualy, is located at Terak in the south of the province. Xinjiang has estimated coal reserves of 1.82 trillion to 2.19 trillion tons which equals 40.5 percent of China’s total reserves.

Long-term coalfield fires are plaguing the region. They occur naturally, some are burning for 1,000 years now. Obviously mining activites, especially accidential explosions, may also cause fires. At the moment dozens of fires still burn.

The fire which was now extinguished was a big one. It started in the early 1950s and has consumed more than 12.43 million tons of coal since then. Burning more than 100 meters underground it covered an area of 923,500 square meters and exhaled more than 70,000 tons of toxic gas each year, including sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. And it made it impossible to mine the rest of the 650 million tons, which were about to be destroyed.

In 1958 the Coalfield Fire Fighting Project Office was established with the goal to extinguish those fires. So far they extinguished 34 coalfield fires and plan to do another 28 by 2015. The technology is rather simple, but costly. First they drill into the burning coal bed and then pump water and slurry into it. This lowers the temperature. Then the surface above the fire is covered to quench it. This process took three years for this fire and cost 89 million yuan (US$12 million).

Croagh Patrick is a sort of Irish holy mountain. Similar to Mt Fuji in Japan, there is a path from the sea to the top of the mountain, guarded by a statue of St. Patrick. But Croagh Patrick is much lower than Mt Fuji, not a volcanoe, and has various ore deposits, especially gold. Every now and then international gold mining companies prospect for gold in the area, but so far there was no deposit found which would be worth mining operations. And obviously the locals are not interested very much in such an operation as it would mean pollution.
Lately Aurum Explorations, a geological consultancy firm which was assigned to examine the mining possibilites, told the local press about the further plans. A private Irish company called Mayo’s Gold plans to create a show mine. It will produce a small amount of gold in the mine, primarly for the tourists, who come to see the process. The rocks are extracted and crushed and small quantities of gold are produced, which will be made into jewellery by Irish designers and sold locally. The mine with the shop and an interpretative centre will be located in Louisburgh.
The company also tries to get the status of an international GeoPark for the region.

Croagh Patrick will not be mined 

It seem the Brits find their caves inadequate. So they build more. At Aireville Park, a new adventure centre which will cost £2 million is constructed at the moment. It will include a life-like cave with water and squeezes.

The center is intended for school groups any sportive people like cavers and climbers. It would allow training in caving in a relatively safe environment.

We understand the advantages of such a training location, but we guess it will not reduce the number of cave accidents. Probably it will increase them, as people who managed the fake will try to do the real thing… However, time will tell.