Tales Of A Tunnel (3 - miniblog)

Starting With The Shipping Forecast

Groups of Islands are covered by sea areas Hebrides, Fair Isle (for Orkney and Shetland) and, further north on the way to Iceland, Faeroes.

This remote achipelago is "owned" by Denmark but exists independently, a bit like the Isle of Man. Faeroes has its own flag, administration and language. The language is closer to Icelandic than any other Norse tongue. 

The Islands are rocky ...

... and sparsely populated. Industry revolves round the sea and agriculture plus a good dollop of tourism. Below are three sheep waiting for their bus home after a night out ...

... or maybe just sheltering from the rain.  Bus stops are clearly marked ...

... even in the middle of nowhere. And with street lights too!

Again, like the Scottish island groups, the Faeroes have an excellent public transport system. The diargammatic map shows its scope.

The BLUE lines are the ferries. Some are small and local ....

... with bigger boats sailing to the mainland.

But what makes The Faeroes very different from the Scottish island groups is their love of tunnels. There are dozens of them both on the land ...

... and between islands.

On the map below, PINK islands are linked by tunnel, causeway or bridge; YELLOW land is awaiting its tunnel due in 2025 and the GREEN bits are only accessible by sea or air ...

... usually helicopter as the land is too lumpy for airstrips!

fbb hopes to look in more detail at these services soon, but for the moment it is the tunnels, or one tunnel set that is of interest.

Here is the map.

... and here is an enlargement.

A three way tunnel meets under the sea and, tada, the join is controlled by a roundabout!

This particular piece of tunnelisation is relatively new. By UK tunnel standards,  traffic is light with a simple two way road being sufficient to carry the load. Tolls are charged ...

... electronically.

The roadways are, in part, embellished with lighting displays ...

Sadly Streetview gives up at the tunnel entrances of which the northern twosome are, at least, visible from the noddy cars noddable limit ...

... but the southern exit is lost along its wiggly approach road.

At least its underwater trajectory is on the maps!

More on Faeroes bus and ferry services in due course.

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"NOT the Advent Calendar", but ...

     The      

  CHRIST -mas 

  Criss-muss  

   Confusion  

 Critique  1  

Part of the CHRISTmas  Story ...

... but up to 2 Years Later.

Like the "Find The Fault" quiz above, we ask, "What is wrong with many traditional Nativity pictures like that shown below?"

Almost everything!

This 5 minute video reconstruction starts with part of the foreign visitors' journey. All of it might well be tedious to watch.

It ends with the escape of Mary, Joseph and Jesus to Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod.

In this video, one thing is very wrong; one thing is probably wrong and one big conventionally wrong thing is actually right. 

Also : it is pretty certain they would not have encountered snow!

More tomorrow.

In case you are wondering; these biblical blog bits will end on Twelfth Night, the official end of CHRISTmas. Criss-mus was packed away on Boxing Day?

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 Tunnel blog Part 4 : Thurs 2nd Jan