Sinful Sunday: Dark Corners

Ever since visiting Clearwell Caves and Wookey Hole as a child – along with the grottes and caverns of the Dordogne – I’ve been fascinated and instinctively unsettled by cave systems. There’s something alien about the cool, still air that fills their networks of chambers and tunnels, and it’s easy to be disorientated by the way light reflects off different surfaces or sound echoes at unexpected angles.

One of my favourite horror movies, The Descent, brings to grotesque life some of our worst fears about what might happen were we to find ourselves trapped below ground for too long. For some people, giving that terror corporeal form is unnecessary – the claustrophobia alone makes the idea of being surrounded by that much rock a deeply unpleasant one.

In Luxembourg yesterday, the ‘caves’ we visited had an unusual twist – they were actually built above the city, as tunnels under the old fortress. Once used as barracks, bomb shelters, and even a prison, the Casemates du Bock can now be explored at leisure, and afford excellent views over the city below.

Find photo opportunities on a busy Saturday lunchtime wasn’t easy, but that’s the things about caves: even when they’re full of people – even when you can hear footsteps and excited cries echoing in the distance – it’s always possible to find a dark corner somewhere…

(Photo credit: Exposing40)