Sea salt bought in a shop near the water front market in Lisbon. The shop had baskets of baccalau, dried and salted cod. The pieces are wide and long and cardboard stiff. I thought I spotted a bag of dry crackers for dipping in an on board fish stew.
My interest started with the book ‘The History of Cod’ that links cod fishing to world events. ‘Salt’ was the follow up book.

Postcards from Bad Oeyhhausen, West Phalia. The pigs remembered in this fountain lead to the discovery of the thermal waters. As they wallowed in a muddy field, the farmer noticed a crust of salt on their backs. (The story reminds me of the cows who found epsom salts). The king set up a salt mine. As they were drilling for salt reserves, the miners discovered a thermal spring.

We found the well at the centre of a radiating development of low houses. It was enclosed in a newly designed monument and surrounded by lavender. This was the source of the famous Epsom Spa.

Henry Wicker, a villager, was grazing his cows on the common during the very dry summer of 1618. He saw a water collecting in a hoof print on the dry ground. The next day a hole he had dug was full of water. The parched cows wouldn’t drink the water, but Wicker tried it. He found that it was salty and soon felt its purgative effect. With proof of its cleansing qualities, he then set out to tell of its curative powers. In this way, the cow herd Wicker was the discoverer of magnesium. The story reminds me of the farmer and his wallowing pigs, in the German spa town of Bad Oeynhausen, whose foragings were the start of the salty resort.

The ‘Epsom Salts’ in the water are magnesium sulphate. It is abundant in seawater and effects the way sound travels through the sea; it allows only low frequencies to travel a long way underwater, like the sounds made by whales.

As visitors came from Europe to take the waters, by drinking and bathing in them, a circle of shops and refreshments grew around the well. After this came the inns, taverns, gaming rooms (casinos are often connected to spa towns), a bowling green, a cockpit and the assembly rooms.

Celie Fiennes in her travel journal notes the ‘ raceing of boyes, or rabbets, or piggs; in the evening the Company meete in the Greenes, where are Gentlemen bowling, Ladyes walking, the benches round to sitt, there are little shopps, and a gameing or danceing-roome”.

Some visitors drank 16 pints of the water a day from stoneware jars and followed this with a walk as the effects took place. In 1750s you could buy Epsom water at the Mineral Water Warehouse in Fleet Street.

Nemiah Grew was the author of The Anatomy of Plants, Seawater made Fresh, and The nature and Use of the Salt contained in Epsom and other such waters. He began to produce the salts to sell in chemists and there was no need to travel to Epsom common to take them. Epsom was also out run by other fashionable spa towns like Bath Spa and Tunbridge Wells. The spa was in decline but the gaming and racing lived on.

A RELAXING BATH

Put 2 cups of Epsom salts in a bath. Soak for more than 15 minutes.
You can buy 1kilo bags of Espsom Salts from the chemist.

Snow covered roads mean there are queues for salt at the salt mines.

This dinosaur met its death as it was trapped in a sticky lime lagoon. It lay motionless, as the salty low-oxygen water was lethal to any scavengers who may have disturbed its position.

The unique mud in which it lay could capture impressions with unusual detail. It recorded the imprints of soft bodied organisms such as jelly fish and even the movement, a trail, of a horseshoe crab. Because of this, after millions of years, we are able to see that the dinosaur had feathers. A bird!

The bird appears to be ‘spread eagled’, ‘ splayed’  and ‘flat like a roadkill.’*

The limestone is ideal for printmaking process, lithography. Being smooth and fine it is able to print great detail and breaks off from the quarry in thin white slabs.

*From: Dry Store Number 1 by Richard Fortey

Part of the identity of the Ancient  Egyptian is the wearing of heavy dark make up around the eyes. New research adds another dimension to this.  It seems that the eye make up may have helped to prevent disease. Were the Egyptians aware of this?

Cleopatra’s eye make-up ‘had health benefits’

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, author of The Human Story, suggests the average person has 100 friends, with a close five at the core. 

Aristotle said friends must have eaten salt together,  in other words, shared experiences.

If you have 10,000 square feet, can accomodate a thirteen foot crate, 4 trucks over forty foot and have circulating security guards, you may be have a chance of staging the exhibit of the Super Croc.  This includes a flesh reconstruction, a super skeleton and the kind of  field tents used in the excavation.

The crocodile lived in the salt water  110 million years ago and grew to 40 feet long.

There is a shortage of rock salt. It is in great demand as councils battle to clear snow covered roads.

Rock salt chandeliers in Wieliczka Salt Mine, Poland

A 1930s tourist brochure for the Ariege featuring the two main attractions; the thermal spas and the Prehistoric cave paintings at Niaux.