We never thought about the tunnels. When we decided to travel through the waterways of France, certainly we expected locks and canals and bridges and rivers and traffic, never considering that sometimes, instead of going over a hill, we would go through it.
We hate tunnels. Well, we don't mind (too much) the short ones where you can see the light at the end. Dark, dank and drippy as they are, at least you can keep your eye on that pinhole of light and watch it get bigger.
It's when you can not see the light at the end of the tunnel that it tends to get a little spooky, especially when there is a traffic light in the middle of the tunnel that turns red just as you come upon it and you have to tie up in the tight turn-out while you wait for a large barge to pass....very, very slowly, the noise of it echoing all around.
It's spooky when you've read that the tunnel you're passing through was built during the Napoleonic wars by British prisoners, who, when they died, were simply buried in the walls, and look, pieces of the walls have sloughed off and doesn't that look like bone not brick?
It's when you have to register with the lock keeper so they know that someone is in one of the longer tunnels and if you don't come out.....well, we're not sure whether they look for you or just close the tunnel. Oh, of course, they look for you.
If you happen to be possessed by an over-active imagination, tunnels can provide hours of scary what-if thinking.
Luckily, we're not that way.
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