Chasing Haldane to Sennen Cove

Still in gentle pursuit of my biographical subject John Scott Haldane, as the paperback of his life comes due, we took a two day summer break near the rim of Sennen Cove. Haldane brought his family here for their summer holidays a century ago.

I hadn't realized the proximity of Sennen Cove to Land's End, and came to know the route Haldane took with his children to run inside Nanjizel Cave. It reminded me of the value of site visits to fuel a biography with all-important details. I like visiting a landscape and trace its features back a hundred years or so. For Haldane I chased his ghost round his homeland, his university, a coal mine where he achieved his initial breakthroughs, and up Pikes Peak in Colorado, but only now am getting round to his holidays.

The weather was largely a sweep of winds and rain, so we dipped underground at Geevor Mine to imagine Haldane's work deep inside the tin mines of the region. After a tour of the workshops we were guided down a mine shaft of the 1700s by a former miner ... and again I learned something that would have entered the book. Haldane was an expert on gases and pioneered methods to help workers in the intense heat of the deepest tin mines. What he didn't know, because this gas stayed hidden till recent years, was that the heat stemmed from radon, a gas emitted by decomposing granite. The examiner filled me in on the latest information.
You have to let a book, and a biographical subject, go - but there's always more to learn.
Labels: Haldane;Geevor;radon, Old Success Inn, Sennen