Читать книгу Into the Abyss. Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World онлайн

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One by one we started slowly down the solid but undulating rock of the track. I scrambled down the steep path, sometimes leaning so far back to keep my balance that I was holding myself off the rocks with my trailing hand. At other times I was almost sitting on the rock as I went down.

We made our way down the 100-foot cliffs in this ungainly fashion but as we neared the rock foot the track became less steep and I could walk more easily. At the very bottom, the track opened out onto a large tabletop slab of solid rock. Just here, there was a large rectangular hole, some 15 feet across and about 5 feet deep cut into the rocky shelf.

“That’s the old castle pool for keeping lobsters and crabs in – nothing like fresh lobster” piped up one of the old hands.

So that was it – a hundred years or more ago some poor souls had been delegated to cut these solid steps down the precarious cliffs and hack out a pool from the solid rock, just to keep shell fish fresh for the guests at the Castle. Ingenious - and very functional. I tried to imagine the scene – my thoughts in black and white like an old picture. Castle servants in white grandad shirts with black waistcoats and caps bashing away at the solid rock to enlarge and shape what was probably partly an original feature.