Artificial Caves
- Thread starter cap n chris
- Start date
rhychydwr1
Active member
cap 'n chris said:
OK, I give up, what is it? Is it Templeton?
Roger W
Well-known member
Alkapton said:
It depends what you mean by "artificial cave" - the term seems to have been used in more than one way in this thread.
You can manufacture something out of bits of concrete pipe, hardboard and polyfilla to create something for people to crawl through - for the uninitiated to find out what a crawl feels like, or for the real hard (and thin) men to see how small a gap they can squeeze through...
You can blast out a long tunnel into a hillside to drain water from a mine or under a town to carry away the effluent...
You can honeycomb a hillside with tunnels while mining for sand or chalk...
You can create an underground passageway by tunnelling, cut-and-cover, or by building against a cliff face, to create an imitation cave like the one in the theme park in Shenzhen or Pavey's Cave/Aquarium Cave/Waterfall Cave/Whatever in Cheddar Gorge...
And if you want an artificial boulder choke in your artificial cave, I don't see why you shouldn't have one. You could artistically arrange a suitable pile of limestone boulders or chunks of expanded polystyrene to suit your purpose...
I heard somewhere that most of the caves on Mendip are artificial, anyway...
Slug
Member
This place has just been featured on my local T.V. news, I suppose this also qualifies as an Artificial Cave, though I doubt it'll do much to encourage its customers to take up real Speleology.
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/health/Alternative-health-Try-Halotherapy-at.5465278.jp
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/health/Alternative-health-Try-Halotherapy-at.5465278.jp
Andy Walsh
Member
Two year ago we had one at a primary school fair came on a trailer from Clapham (Yorkshire) all the teachers were impressed and enjoyed a trip before the kids what was good was it went allover the place inside and 50m long!Better still it had video to see all was well and detachable panels to quickly let anyone out for any reason!! :ras:
The only "fault "was inside would have been better a limestone white shade instead of dull grey .
As a cave it was like a side bit in Easegill good value at ?2 at the time
Kenilworth
New member
I have been in a couple of artificial caves. One is in the Museum of Natural History in Cincinnati, Ohio, and gives a decent impression of what an actual tourist cave might be like. It is lighted, includes a running stream, off-limits side passages, and a few opportunities for crawling and squeezing. The most unnatural features, as I recall, are a few small bat exhibits set into the walls. It is interesting to stand outside and see how many people are too terrified to enter.
The other was constructed by a Kentucky caving club and is made entirely of cardboard boxes. It is housed in a lodge basement and is surprisingly extensive and labyrinthine but not at all cave-like. I can imagine that both might attract a few people to caves, but I'm not sure, from watching people experience them, that they made the most of a teaching opportunity.
The other was constructed by a Kentucky caving club and is made entirely of cardboard boxes. It is housed in a lodge basement and is surprisingly extensive and labyrinthine but not at all cave-like. I can imagine that both might attract a few people to caves, but I'm not sure, from watching people experience them, that they made the most of a teaching opportunity.
psychocrawler
Member
Went in an artificial cave at Center Parcs Sherwood Forest with my grand kids over New Year. Not bad. They loved it and we even got a badge - just like open water diving! Took about an hour with a leader so not wildly adventurous but the kids are quite young. Plenty of crawling, ups and downs in a fibre glass cave that was quite like the rock passage above Niagara to Eerie Pot but with sharper bends and included a ball pond 'sump' at one point. Advantages: totally safe with escape hatches if anyone has a claustrophobic wobbler, needs no kit, clean and dry, parents happy to let loony Grandy take the grandkids and less than 30m from the bar! Disadvantages: lacks the abject misery of caving in nearby Derbyshite i.e. no mud and far too hot in the absence of a Speedwell style streamway or a nice proper sump to immerse oneself in. The grand kids will experience these delights elsewhere in due course!
Nowhere near as useful for experienced cavers as a climbing wall is to climbers; the only way to get fit for caving is to go caving and artificial caves like this are just not long enough or cold enough or wet enough.
Nowhere near as useful for experienced cavers as a climbing wall is to climbers; the only way to get fit for caving is to go caving and artificial caves like this are just not long enough or cold enough or wet enough.
