Shell Grotto: England's mysterious underground seashell chamber

13 days ago (boingboing.net)

There are actually quite a lot of these in the UK - I remember many years ago meeting a lady who had visited them all and written a book about them!

I havent been to boingboing in probably 15 years. Its weird to have nostalgia triggered by something so different from what it used to be.

  • It used to be one of my favourite sites for weird DIY stuff. At some point in the mid 2010s I guess ad revenue tanked and social media killed their business model, and it made sense to cash in on their underground zine-y brand to hawk affiliate links, sponsored content, e-courses and clickbait. Sad but understandable. Around the same time I found the same vibe in other disparate places: The Cracked podcast (I still enjoy Jason Pargin's stuff) listening to Mark Frauenfelder's Cool Tools podcast, which is now called Recommendo, which carries on the affiliate link stuff and scratches that gadget itch. And the DIY and tinkering vibe is a huge part of HN.

This is probably the highlight of a visit to an otherwise unremarkable English seaside town. The chambers are very old (even by English standards) and so unlike anything else medieval that is still around.

Is perhaps contingent on the Bram Stoker "Dracula," which is a series of letters that either the captain of a ship ties his hands to the mast, or leaves a letter prior to landing on the coast, where black dog howls on the disfigured countryside.