Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #523215 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Jim has done it again.
Jim has done it again! His latest book tells of his potholing expeditions in the 1960's in countries as varied as Spain, Greece, Mexico and Iran as well as the Yorkshire Dales and Wales.
Ideal reading for the armchair traveller and retired caver, this book is embellished with his brilliant cartoons. His illustrations include diagrams of caves such as Provatina in Greece, where Blackpool tower could fit into it twice over.
There are several tales which will give you nightmares. My favourite was when Jim was descending on a rope in El Sotano in Mexico, when 500 feet down, he became stuck on the rop. There was still 900 feet to the bottom. You will have to read the book to find out how he got out of it.

another wonderful book by old "ers"
This is the fourth caving book I've read by Jim Eyre ("Ers"). I started with The Cave Explorers, went on to Race Against Time, then It's Only a Game, and now this book. Ers, now in his eighties, writes with a fine self-deprecating sense of humor, and the book is lavishly illustrated with both his superb line drawings, mostly of scruffy cavers including himself, and photographs (which are, very understandably, not as interesting as the drawings).

Many of the stories here have appeared (in part) in Eyre's earlier books, as have some of his drawings, but most of the material is new. The episodes that have appeared before are retold, usually with additional details. For example: in Race Against Time there's a hair-raising tale of being sent down an old 1000' deep mine shaft at Maeshafn in search of two lost boys. That same tale is retold here at much greater length, with a drawing of how when Ers went behind some bushes to urinate before descending the shaft, he was followed by a crowd of TV cameramen filming the event--which presumably didn't make the evening news.

The tales here are primarily about caving, and most are humorous, but there are also serious stories about cave rescues, such as the Mossdale Cavern disaster, in which 6 top cavers were drowned. You'll also read about trips to Turkey, Iran, and other locales, and there's a fine chapter on Ers' first wife, who ran off with a part-time taxi driver. Ers was suspected by the police of doing her in, and when some fellow cavers turn up a body in a pothole, the cavers think it's Ers' wife. He gets a call "We've found her!" "Where is she?" asks Eyre. "You know, me and my mate knows--but nobody else knows. We thought we would have a word with you first." The skeleton, with her hands tied, and buried under rocks, was not in fact Eyre's wife.

After reading Eyre's books, you realize several things. First, if a cat has 9 lives, Ers has had about 90--it's amazing that he's reached age 80. He's usually the one who gets sent to try the dangerous places, although luckily Mossdale Caverns frightened him too much--he was invited on that fateful trip, but declined. Second, speaking from experience, cavers tend to be an odd lot, and Ers is a living legend. And finally, the caving world if fortunate to have it's own Scherezade!