The Painted Veil filmed in China

The Painted Veil is a novel by Somerset Maugham published in 1925. It is set mostly in China. It has been adapted for the screen 3 times. The last film version was 2006.

Most of the outdoor scenes were filmed in karst landscape in Guangxi. Guangxi is an autonomous region bordering Vietnam. The former capital was Guilin, which is surrounded by limestone hills and caves. Yunnan lies to the west. Filming was done in Yizhou, which is an area known for its karst formations.

Bear Grylls killing bats in China on Born Survivor

I have already mentioned how Bear Grylls has been criticised for killing bats in China, see my blog of 2015. And I wrote about this on my Caves of Malaysia website.

The Discovery programme was called Bear Grylls, Born Survivor. It was first shown in 2010. In the USA it was called Man vs Wild.

I didn't see the programme then. But I did see it in 2016. Series 4, Ep 9 on Discovery Channel. The episode featured Bear Grylls "sharing invaluable survival strategies" when he was in a southern China jungle after a typhoon. From TV guide UK : "Adventurer Bear Grylls visits a region devastated by a typhoon and has to tackle swollen rivers, climb large waterfalls and use an ancient tribal technique to catch bats for food".

He reaches a cave and says that China has the largest number of unexplored caves in the world. And that American fighters used caves for shelters.

To go into the cave, he makes a torch by splitting bamboo, packs it with dry leaves, ties it together with vine and lights. The bats inside mean food. He comments on the smell of ammonia and says the spores from the bat guano are dangerous as they carry histoplasmosis. He uses light and smoke from his torch to spook the bats. He says bats have been around for 50 million years and use echo location.

He goes out of the cave in order to work out how to catch the bats. He makes a trap  /  net from branches and vines [it looks like a large lacrosse stick]. We then see him wildly waving the trap around in the entrance and a message at the bottom of the screen says something to the effect that killing bats is illegal in the UK and some countries. He continues to wave the trap around and catches a bat and holds it up to show the camera. Then suddenly the scene changes to him sliding into a river.

Later on he catches a large frog, he holds it up, then the next shot we see him eating a leg of the skinned frog, raw.

That evening he makes a raised hammock and makes a fire to cook his bats. He also sets a rat trap using bat guts as bait. We see him skewer 2 bats onto a stick and roast them. He says bats carry rabies so must be well cooked. We see him eating one, he doesn't like the taste but they are warming. In the morning he finds a large rat in a trap and cooks that.

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Bear Grylls was apparently sacked by Discovery over a contract dispute according to this report in March 2012. It obviously wasn't a permanent thing as he has been seen on Discovery since then.

Carlsbad Caverns visit 1994

In March 1994 I was in the USA for the first time. My first night was spent in El Paso, which is a border town in the extreme western corner of Texas. It stands on the bank of the Rio Grande with the Mexican state of Chihuahua on the other side. The next day I took the bus to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, it is 145 miles northeast of El Paso. The bus dropped me at White City near the Carlsbad Hotel and I then managed to get a lift to Carlsbad Caverns, 7 miles away.

The show cave entrance complex is situated in a hill overlooking the Chihuahuan Desert.

I paid for the Red Tour, $5 and took the elevator down 750' into the cave. I stepped out into a concrete world of shops, cafe, lunch room etc. A big chill immediately hit me as it was so much cooler than the outside.

I did the self guided walk of about an hour around the Big Room, which used to be the world's largest chamber until Sarawak Chamber in Mulu was found. The chamber is full of stal, some is huge. I saw the Bottomless Pit.

There was another tour, the Blue Route, which uses the natural entrance but the last tour was at 2 pm.

A very nice cave, one of the best I have seen, just a pity I couldn't see more. There was a good display in the exhibition area.

5 miles from Carlsbad is Lechuguilla Cave in the Guadalupe Mountains.

From Carlsbad Cavern I went to Carlsbad town, 27 miles away -

See more on the Carlsbad Caverns homepage.

Underground London - Manor Gardens Ice House

There is an ice house in Manor House Gardens in Lee, SE London, in the borough of Lewisham.

The Manor House was built in 1772 as a private residence for Thomas Lucas who was an important man in Guy's Hospital. Today it is used as a public library.

It is thought the ice house was built in 1773. Ice houses are buildings used to store ice throughout the year, mostly before refrigerators were invented. Some were insulated buildings, others were man-made underground chambers. They may have been close to natural sources of winter ice, if not, ice had to be transported in. During the winter, ice and snow would be taken into the ice house and insulated with straw or sawdust. It would remain frozen for many months, often until the following winter, and could be used as a source of ice during summer months.

It's not clear how long the Manor Gardens ice house was used for ice. At the end of the 19th century it was used as stabling for ponies belonging to a local builder. During the Second World War it was used as an air raid shelter for occupants of houses in Manor Lane. It was restored by the Lee Manor Society in 2000.

The ice house is made of brick. Ice would have come from the nearby lake. Access today is by a new staircase, this is looking in from the entrance -

An ice well was linked by corridors to the ice stores -

Open House London describe the ice house as

Grade II listed ice well and underground chambers (1773) in Manor House Gardens park, which provided ice for nearby Manor House, former home of Sir Francis Baring. Cited in 2002 Civic Trust Awards.

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Underground London - Crystal Palace subway

The Crystal Palace subway is slowly being restored and is occasionally open to the public. It dates back to Victorian times and was built to provide access to the Crystal Palace. It goes under the main road, Crystal Palace Parade -

The Crystal Palace was the huge iron and glass building used for the Great Exhibition in 1851 in Hyde Park. After the exhibition it was rebuilt at the top of Sydenham Hill in 1854 but was destroyed by fire in 1936.

There were 2 stations serving the Palace, one was the low level station and the other was a new high level one built in 1865 on the western side of Crystal Palace Parade. The subway was then built for access to the Palace. Image of the railway and Palace from Illustrated London News -

The Subway was designed with groined arches of coloured bricks and stone, resting on 15 columns. It was meant for first class passengers. It led to a roofed vestibule and 4 staircases. It opened at the end of 1865.

During the Second World War the subway was used as an air raid shelter. The subway was modified to provide sleeping areas, a canteen, lavatories and drains. The High Level Station closed in 1954. However the subway was still used as a short cut to access the motor racing in the park.

The subway survived but the roofed vestibule didn't. In 1972 the subway was listed by English Heritage. And since then it is slowly being restored.

Looking out to where the roofed vestibule used to be -

And looking back at the entrance -

See more on Open House London.

© Liz Price

Bear Grylls Mission Survive programme axed

Although this is not cave related, I am posting it as Bear Grylls has been mentioned in my blog.

In May 2016 it was announced that ITV has cancelled Bear Grylls TV show, Mission Survive, after two series. See The Guardian report, 31 May. The reasons are due to a fall in ratings.

As far as I know, none of the episodes were filmed in caves.

Bear Grylls has received many negative comments from international cavers in the past due to his reckless / dangerous attitudes to caving - see labels on the column to the right.

New cave art found in Spain in Atxurra Cave

New Palaeolithic cave drawings have been found deep in a cave in northern Spain. About 70 drawings were found 300 m underground in Atxurra Cave in the northern Basque region, in northern Spain. The engravings and paintings were found in 2014 and featured in the news in May 2016.

See The Guardian .

Underground London - sinkhole near Woolwich

Not really cave related, but it is something underground!!! Early on 12 May 2016 a sinkhole appeared in a road in a residential area near Woolwich in London. A car partly disappeared in the hole at Charlton.

A possible cause is the fact that the underlying material is chalk and there could be cavities, also the area was mined during Victorian times so there could be tunnels underneath.

According to The Telegraph, " In recent years large holes have been discovered across the borough, which experts have blamed on underground chalk caverns and disused mines which are “littered” across the district."............. "While officials from the Royal borough of Greenwich council assured residents that the hole had been “stabilised”, a 19th century report recovered by this newspaper suggests that the entire area may be precariously resting on top of a series of underground caverns.

Published in the Kentish Mercury on 24 March 1849, the article reveals that rail workers excavating the South Eastern Railway discovered a large crevice underneath Maryon Park, less than a mile from where Thursday’s sinkhole appeared.

It read: "during the operations... they came upon a cave, of considerable dimensions, cut in the chalk and flint rocks.

"A great quantity of sand has fallen at one end, blocking up the side from which it has apparently been entered, and the workmen are now busily employed in shoring up a part of the roof of one of the chambers, the railway passing over its entire breath."

It is the second sinkhole to emerge in south east London in just over a week. On May 4 a sinkhole appeared outside a  house in Plumstead.

Now there is concern that property prices will fall after news of these sinkholes.
“Greenwich is one of the most expensive land areas in Europe, but in recent years six deneholes have been discovered in the area around Maryon Park alone,”.

Deneholes are medieval chalk extraction pits and are mainly found in Kent and Essex along the lower banks of the Thames.

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Update 13 May

A small sinkhole appeared in a road in Woolwich. Photo taken from newsshopper.

This is the 3rd sinkhole to open in the Greenwich area in 10 days.

Ray Mansfield RIP

My very good friend Ray Mansfield sadly passed away on 6 March 2016. He was a well known caver in his younger days, and will probably be best remembered for his bibliographic work, especially BCRA's bibliographic index Current Titles in Speleology. He had an amazing memory and was able to recall facts at a moment's notice.

I'm not in the right frame of mind to write more at the moment, but see some comments on the UK cavers forum.

Ray January 2015 cutting an Xmas Tunis cake -