Better late than never, I suppose...

Either I have been lazy or busy, I can't actually decide which, probably lazily busy.... Last Saturday I met up with The Vicar to have a look at a few of Manchester's amazing drains, with Gorton Falls being the starter course.

The gentle dripping, rain dampened trees hung low as we made our way down the shaky rusted ladder, skinny doesn't begin to describe it. Safely down though we headed up stream to the first of the waterfalls, the near deafening noise can be heard from the access point.


We took one look at the ladder leading up, covered in 'lady products' the five metre climb could have been fifty, neither of us in much of a mood to tackle the filthy beast this time on a Saturday.

So heading back to the access point we discussed where to head next and settled on SSSI (nope, I still don't know what it stands for). I can't pretend I knew anything about this one, I'd heard of it but nothing more.


It's a massive sewer overflow.

But fook me what a sight, as ten million gallons of shit fly by before you eyes, the noise was incredible, the structure looked like something out of Tolkien and the SMELL...actually wasn't that bad. The Vicar told me some statistic about this one (three quarters of Manchester's sewage runs through here...?), sadly, I can't actually recall exactly what it was, nevermind. It's a sight to behold, really, it is.


We cracked on, heading for Processor, Bungle andI had done this one the other week but I wanted to see it again, if only for the exercise, at 2300m this one is a GREAT walk in the park. I spent longer than I care to imagine, once again, looking at a steady stream of shite rushing by, what a way to spend 8 hours on a Saturday. Brilliant.


In the meantime I've been boating underground as well as slogging through thigh deep mud, all in the name of noseyness, I can't wait to tell you about that one...

TnM ;->

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Anyone would think I've been lazy....

...nine days without a blog post, crikey. Fact is I've been keeping myself as busy as ever, just some of the stuff I'm doing is gonna take more than one trip to complete, so for the ease of reading, and sake of completeness, I'll only post when the jobs are finished, hopefully in the early hours later this week.

Only a short entry this one and only a couple of pics...

TnM ;->

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Processor, Manchester - Marvellous!

Every now and then I get an early evening text from Bungle, which usually reads something along the lines of 'where you at, fancy doing summat?'. I can usually find time to go exploring with Bungle, especially if it means getting back underground. And so it was, we headed for the Processor drain.

Processor lies within the Harpurhey/Moston area of Manchester, not the greatest of neighbourhoods to be rolling up in at ten o'clock at night, but, needs must when it comes to draining goodness and this one is well worth visiting the badlands for. First discovered by drain God Siologen back in 2004 this culvert traverses 2300m with sections varying from RBP to RCP to RBP (potholes included) with a few concrete side chambers and side-pipes thrown in for good measure, too!

What makes this culvert so interesting is the sewer overflows that are attached in a couple of chambers, when the water reaches a certain level a pair of huge machines will kick into life and skim the top of the the sewer water clear of all those nasty things you generally don't wanna see once you've flushed them down the bog.

Judging by some of the detritus lying around they don't have a 100% success rate, but it's cool as fook finding giant machines underground though, jam-rags and all.

We spent three hours or so walking up from the outfall and back down again, stopping along the way to climb up ladders, in and out of pipes and generally have a damn good nosey around, it's a feature packed place, infact, it might just knock Red Barn off the top of my 'favourite' list so far. Cool stuff.

TnM :->

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