What is the dark side?

Abstract

In late 2005 I was privileged to gaze upon one of the marvels of the modern world. Buried around 30 metres under the Swiss-French border, near Geneva, is a roughly circular tunnel, about 27 kilometres long. The tunnel is lined in grey concrete, with a painted floor, and is about three metres across. It makes a nice, if somewhat dispiriting, running track, the wall curving endlessly and rather hellishly away in both directions as you puff your way around. In fact, informal races have been held in it; a good time for a circuit is two hours. A more common means of transportation would be a bicycle or one of those two-wheeled electric buggies. I was lucky to get into this tunnel, because from now on and for a good while no one else will be going down there.