Down & Snout

Nothing says Bah Humbug like rising prices. We have temporarily dropped the prices on holiday scarves so your family can look absolutely adorable - grab yours quick because they’re almost gone!

Culture

Spending the night at the Deep Sleep “hotel” feels less like checking into accommodation and more like sneaking into the Earth’s secret basement.

Tucked inside an abandoned slate mine beneath the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales, Deep Sleep sits around 1,375 feet (about 419 meters) below the surface, making it one of the deepest places on the planet where you can legally book a bed for the night.

What you’re reserving, though, isn’t a standard hotel room. The operators describe it as a remote underground camp, and that’s a far better mental image: simple timber cabins, warm lighting, and thick duvets surrounded on all sides by raw rock that once echoed with the sound of Victorian miners’ tools.

Getting there is half the story. The experience starts above ground near the village of Tanygrisiau, where you meet your guide, pull on a helmet, lamp, harness, and sturdy boots, and hike for roughly 45 minutes into the hills. At the entrance cottage of the Cwmorthin quarry, you say goodbye to daylight and step into the mine itself, following a route that threads past old stairways, decaying bridges, and flooded tunnels. The descent takes about an hour and feels like time travel: rusty rails, forgotten equipment, and vast chambers hint at the days when slate from these mountains roofed homes around the world.

Deep Sleep sits at the far end of this journey, behind a heavy steel door that seals off a surprisingly cozy little world. Inside the main cavern are four compact twin-bed cabins and one “grotto” room for couples, all built as wooden pods against the rock. The temperature hovers at about 10°C (50°F) year-round, so thick bedding, heaters, and rugs do a lot of the comfort work. Showers don’t exist down here and the toilet is composting rather than flush, which sounds rougher than it feels; the whole thing is run like a well-organized expedition rather than a spa.

Evening is when the uniqueness really sinks in. After you arrive, the team serves an expedition-style hot meal at a long picnic table under the rock ceiling, with hot drinks and headlamps creating a kind of underground campfire. There’s no phone signal, no internet, and no windows to check the weather. Conversation becomes the entertainment: people swap stories about the descent, compare who found which narrow squeeze the most unnerving, and try to imagine the lives of miners who did similar routes daily by candlelight.

Then comes the silence. Once the lights dim and you retreat to your cabin, the mine feels almost impossibly still. There are no cars, no upstairs neighbors, no distant sirens. You hear small things instead: the faint hum of equipment, water dripping somewhere out in the darkness, the rustle of your own sleeping bag. For many guests, that absence of modern noise is what makes the night so memorable; reports of unusually deep, uninterrupted sleep are common, helped along by the cool air and total lack of daylight cues.

Morning comes not with sunrise but with a knock and a hot drink around 8 a.m. Breakfast is simple, and then it’s time to reverse the whole journey and climb back up toward. Stepping out of the mine, the ordinary world feels weirdly loud and bright, like someone just turned the saturation up on life. It’s only then that you appreciate how unusual Deep Sleep really is: a place where industrial history, adventure tourism, and genuine rest all intersect in a hole in the ground you’d normally walk straight past.

It’s not a five-star resort, and it’s not trying to be. Deep Sleep is for travelers who like their comfort with a side of grit (to say the least!) and their bedtime stories told in the very tunnels where history happened. If you’re willing to trade a skyline for a stone ceiling, it might be the most unforgettable night’s sleep you’ll ever have. Now, who is ready to book this? Does my family want this for Christmas?

Truth revealed: I guess we need to define “well”
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Who dat?: I agree that mirrors can sometimes be frightening

What’s Wrong With Your Dog?

Why do dogs have wet noses? It’s not just a quirky feature - it’s one of their greatest superpowers.

A damp nose helps dogs smell with astonishing clarity. The moisture grabs onto scent particles floating in the air, giving dogs a “sticky note” for smells. A dry nose? That’s like trying to catch confetti with mittens. A wet one? It’s like using glue in a glitter storm.

And don’t just think scent. Dogs sweat through their noses. Since they don’t sweat through their skin like humans, moisture on the nose helps regulate body temperature, making it a built-in cooling system. That’s why dogs often lick their noses: to reset the sensors, draw scent molecules in, and keep things running smoothly.

Here’s another surprising thing: some scientists think the coolness of a dog’s nose might help them detect heat. In other words, they might be able to sense faint warmth from animals or even buried food - a little like having a natural heat detector.

Not all noses are equally wet, and that’s okay. A dry nose doesn’t always signal illness, and a wet one isn’t necessarily a badge of perfect health. It’s simply part of a finely tuned sensory system that turns your dog into a world-class tracker.

Instead of wiping away those nose prints on your window with a sigh, see them as tiny signatures left behind by a natural-born navigator. That damp nose isn't just curious—it’s constantly at work, gathering data, decoding clues, and mapping a universe we can barely detect. To your dog, every whiff is a story. Every scent, a headline. And that wet nose? It's the press pass that gets them into every scene. I adore my dog’s nose so much that I got his nose print from an enlarged picture put onto a pendant for a necklace! Every dog’s nose is unique.

Is Last Year’s Sun Damage Showing Up As This Year’s Dark Spots?

You can’t go back in time and prevent sun damage from last year, but you can do something about it this year.

Chuckle

The fib is A. Guests must carry everything they bring in backpacks—suitcases and large bags are impractical due to the nature of the descent and interior spacing in the mine.

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