Another lockdown… another commute

[Mendip]

Hopefully you'll get a bit of time to have a mooch around Istanbul, always fancied a visit there.

Not much chance of that sadly... I very much doubt that anyone will be allowed out of the port.






There was one landmark that I really wanted to see during this transit... the iconic White Cliffs of Dover.

The English Channel is undoubtedly one of the most historically significant stretches of water on the planet. Somewhere around 100,000 years ago the breaching of a huge glacial lake fractured the chalk land bridge connecting Britain to continental Europe, initiating the formation of an island. Swampy ground across what is now The Dogger Bank continued to intermittently connect Britain to the Continent during glacial periods with lower water level.

Around 8000 years ago a huge tsunami is thought to have irrevocably flooded this swampy land bridge, thus producing an island nation. This tsunami was triggered by the Storegga Slide, a huge landslip off the west coast of Norway, which is a fascinating topic on it's own. Incidentally, the Ormen Lange gas field is located at the base of the Storegga Slide escarpment and supplies 20% of the UK's gas requirements via the 1166 km long Langeled subsea pipeline.

Storegga Slide - Wikipedia

If it wasn't for the English Channel there probably wouldn't have been endless wars between the French and English through the ages. Napoleon may well have invaded us and then we, along with our colonies and Commonwealth, and most probably Thailand as well, would now be driving on the right. Furthermore with no English Channel the Nazis may well have succeeded 80 years ago and now I could be typing this in German. It makes you think.

But most significantly, if we were not an island nation the UK may have been more predisposed to integrate with our Continental neighbours and there would have been no Brexit. Instead of being stuck on this bloody boat for two weeks, right now I'd be sitting in the Haugesund office and having a pint after work every day.

Everything comes back to geology which is what makes it such a great subject.

But anyway, this was the vessel position at midnight.



Yes, we passed The White Cliffs of Dover in the middle of the bloody night. I was disappointed to say the least.

But despite the disappointment I took a few pictures off our starboard side as we passed. There was just enough moonlight to give the vague indication of whiteness.



Slightly zoomed in you can get a real feel for how magnificent the cliffs would look in daylight.



For the life of me I can't understand why they don't light them up at nighttime, like they do with Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. It would look great.



And here is the comparatively boring French coastline around Calais, off our port side.



The skipper was taking it steady sailing through one of the worlds busiest waterways during the night. We are the little turquoise-coloured boat marked with the black arrow.



And here is one of the lunatic dark blue cross-channel ferries that cut across our bows while plying it's trade back and forth across the main streams of traffic between Dover and Calais.




This also brought me back to the scene of my first proper job back in 1990, which was located around 90 metres below where I took these pictures from.

My job back then was in the UK Crossover Cavern of the Channel Tunnel.



If you've ever wondered why the tunnel has such an uneven vertical profile... it was to stay within the lower Cretaceous chalk marl, a perfect rock to tunnel through. The overlying white chalk is weathered and full of fissures which would have let too much water through during excavation. It's all down to geology again!

Not really on topic, but a few pics I found of the UK Crossover Cavern... just for the memories. I have a load of hard copy pictures in storage somewhere and haven't seen them in years.

The Crossover Cavern was a huge undersea cavern excavated using roadheaders. The cavern was built to allow the rail tracks of the two main tunnels to cross over to the opposing tunnel in the case of maintenance or an accident. If it wasn't for the crossover caverns (the French had one too) the north and south running tunnels would be entirely independent for their entire lengths.

Most photos were carefully stage-managed for the benefit of the HSE Executive. You can see here that roadheader isn't actually making contact with the rock face... if it was the air would have been full of dust.



The crossover cavern was constructed with three initial chambers, two sidewall chambers and one roof chamber. Once stresses had stabilised, these were combined to make one overall cavern.

No machinery at all was being operated for these photos! On days that the HSE Executive visited, all machinery was miraculously being maintained and the air quality was excellent.





And the running tunnel south TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) passing through the crossover cavern on it's way to meet up with the French.