Wp/nth/Hobby Tunnellin

Hobby tunnelin is the act o howkin tunnels as a divarsion. Hobby tunnellers often disn't use muckle gear and the tunnels is bigged wi nobbut hand tuils. It can take mony years te howk a hale tunnel. The biggin is whiles duin i secrecy and the tunnels is nobbut later fund bi chance. A canny amoont o folk hes howked tunnels as a hobby; some hes duin it for therapeutic purposes or as a kínd ov exercise an aa.

Motivations

Start ov a hand-dug escape tunnel i the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, thowt te date frae the First Jewish–Roman War i 66–73 CE

A tunnel is an undergrund passageway, dug throo the surroondin soil or rock for the purpose o transport, passage or communication. Tunnel construction is a sub-discipline o civil engineerin and usually the domain of engineers and construction companies. Some civilians digs tunnels for criminal purposes, like smugglin or hidin illegal guids, or gainin unauthorised access tiv an area. Folks whiles bigs escape tunnels an aa, sic as them under the Berlin Waa.

Tunnelin can be pairt o the biggin ov an undergrund dwellin. Subterranean construction can be duin as an form ov airt forby, sic as the wark o Ra Paulette. Dutch graphic designer Leanne Wijnsma digs short, shalla tunnels as a form ov airt and for fun. She hed dug thirteen bi 2015, three at cultural festivals.

Hobby

A few folks hes dug tunnels as a hobby or for fun, though some hes gien additional reasons for their activities. Seymour Cray, for example, said that the work o diggin helped him te think aboot other problems, and Harrison Dyar saw diggin as a form of exercise.

Some hobbyists started oot constructin summat usefu, but kept on diggin efter completion. This was the case wi William Lyttle, at started oot bi diggin a wine cellar, and Michael Altmann, at howked a cuilin cellar for a café. A Swiss contemporary o Altmann caad Peter Junker dug iv his garden, leukin for watter, but continued diggin efter findin some and howked a 720ft (220m) lang tunnel.

Others maintains at they howked tunnels for a particular purpose, though their tunnellin efforts seems oot o proportion for what they ettled. Dyar biographer Marc Epstein thinks it is mainly ootsiders that desires a sense o purpose. On Dyar's tunnelin for exercise reasons he says that "it’s aamaist unfathomable, the amoont ov energy it wad take" and that "it still disn't add up".

Author Will Hunt thinks extensive tunnellin is at least pairtly an obsession. Psychiatrist Anton Tölk believes that tunnel diggin can be interpreted as a desire te return te the security o the wame womb, and that as an activity it alloos contemplative satisfaction.

Notable cases

Harrison Dyar

Exploration o Dyar's accidentally discovered first tunnel

The American entomologist Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. bigged a network o tunnels on twe occasions, wiv a combined length o 1,300 fut (1,300m). His first, under his Washington, D.C. hame wes accidentally discovered durin construction wark i 1917, wivoot drawin mickle attention. It wes rediscovered i 1924, when a truck sank through the pavement nearby. The tunnel system led te speculation i the press, maistly acause a lot o German newspapers frae the war years o 1917 an 1918 wes fund i the tunnels. Efter a few days Dyar cam forward as the constructor o the tunnels, claimin he hed dug em atween 1906 an 1916, when he relocated te California.

Back i Washington a few years later, Dyar dug oot a second set o tunnels under his new hame. The network hed concrete lined waas, steel staircases an electric leetin. Dyar described hobby tunnelin as a kínd ov exercise for him, sayin "some men plays golf, aw dig tunnels".