Graffiti for a child

This is a curiously vibrant piece of graffiti for a rather unfrequented foot-tunnel.  It runs under the A50 at Blythe Marsh, more as a sort of rain run-off than anything else, as it goes to nowhere really.

But whoever sat here for those lonely hours creating these pictures seems to have wanted to imbue them with childlike fun.

Tunnel for Halloween

Question for Halloween: why are tunnels so spooky?  There are some Freudian answers to this I suppose, but it gets complicated.

My favourite 'ghost' scene' from a movie occurs in Kurosawa's Dreams, which is surely one of the most imaginative films of all time.   In the scene, some soldiers - in strict march formation, their boots clacking loudly, unseen by the main character - emerge from the darkness of a tunnel.  The twist is that the soldiers are ghosts, but they don't actually know it.   That premise is scary enough, but the tunnel (as Kurosawa knew) is the key element.


Swainsley Tunnel, should you care to walk it (!), is on the Manifold Way path.

The 'old' Harecastle Tunnel

The ‘old’ Harecastle Canal Tunnel, the southern end of which you see here, is no longer in use, even though it was used extensively in the nineteenth century together with the ‘new’ Harecastle Tunnel which it sits alongside.  (One tunnel used to take traffic in one direction, the other in the other).
However, it started to subside, and that was that. 

The curious red stain in the water is because there is iron ore in the hill above the tunnel, and traces of the ore seep in.  The reeds are supposed to filter the colouring out.