Yeah...I know...

..I need an update. Coming soon. Honestly.

Mendo ;->

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Getting it right and getting it wrong..

I visited the Huddersfield Fine Worsted works the other day with SparkUK, it made for a nice evenings explore, despite the fact we were dodging security on a relatively small site. And it was raining, and dark and a bit cold too.

I only took one picture, just one single exposure, ISO 400, f5.o for 15 seconds. And it worked. That's the great thing about knowing what your lighting gear is capable of. I shot jpeg normal with two lights, one inside the pressure oven thingy with a red filter on, the other a plain white-ish led held to camera right. Result below.

Getting it wrong though are the security guards at Brunner Mond. Industrial explorer Tarboat was accosted recently on the towpath of the canal that runs past their Lostock works by one of their guards gesticulating that it wasn't legal to photograph the factory, needless to say, Tarboat himself put him in his place, rightly so, and even managed to get a picture of the chap looking uppity.

Outside the fence is outside your jurisdiction. Move along. For more of Tarboat's excellent pictures go here.

M ;->

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The Beast of Stockport...

Deep Silt. The dirtiest, stinking hole in the ground I've had the pleasure of exploring. From the outset this gloopy chamber of filth near pulls your legs from their sockets as slowly and steadily I made my first faltering steps into the unknown.

Deep Silt was named sometime in 2007 by Dodge and Havoc who made a rash and unprepared attempt, nearly losing Dodge in the process. When I looked at it around the same as them I didn't particularly like the look of it either, and ended up leaving it for the best part of 12 months.


Those 12 months soon flew by though and I found myself standing knee deep in the dark and quiet surrounds of the tunnel. Unsure what lay ahead, every footstep was preceeded with the prod of a stick, a deep breath and schluurrrrrrrppp as the mud released my foot. It went on like this for a long, long time. The filth was relentless.

And the tunnel was going downhill, away from the river. That was my theory of this being a long abandoned drain blown away.

Then, water, crystal clear and fresh as a daisy, I broke out the boat and set sail, punting myself along the walls by hand and by stick, I just prayed there were no underwater hazards likely to rip a hole in my dinghy. Cruising down the tunnel though, I came to an impass, where water meets roof, this was where my journey ended, for now.

Spinning the boat around and around and around I headed back from where I came, back through an 18inch gap crawling through mud and eventually back into the fresh air. I left Stockport filthy and confused.


Further research tells me this tunnel (and the wier beside it) was constructed around the turn of the 18th century to provide water power to one of the mills in Stockport town centre, it's actually called Stringer's Tunnel and should connect somewhere further beyond the impass to the Ancient Corn Tunnel, but that remains to be seen...

M :->

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Crisp Delf mine...I banged me noggin...then saw doggers..

..caught it a real cracker on an outcrop of rock, surprised it didn't bring the roof down I hit it that hard. I'm left with a slight cut and a lump for the memory, just goes to show why baseball caps aren't considered PPE.

Moving on though, this place is massive, the galleries and side chambers suck up light like a black hole, which is essentially what it is. Located in the Northern badlands of 'just near Wigan but not Wigan, or Skelmersdale but somewhere inbetween'. Couldn't tell you a thing about it though, beyond how big, dangerous and fun it is.

Bits of the roof were falling down around me as I was taking pics, not big bits of roof, but if enough of them decided to drop at once, Mendo would be skinnier than ever, kinda pancake thin. Something to think about that, pancakes.

Anywho, we (me, Bungle, Stoka, Bigjobs and Littlejobs) spent a good couple of hours mooching around taking in the sights and struggling to fill the place light. Was pretty good fun, apart from banging my head. Banging your head on something solid and immovable...well, I was always gonna come off second best.

Then we saw doggers.

M ;->

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...so tired...

...I am. Dunno why but this week I can hardly keep my eyes open. Came back from Wales on Sunday, back to work on Monday, Tuesday at Sal's and Wednesday picking up the pieces of a pointless argument.

Thursday was quiet and today I'm shattered. Don't seem to have done much recently, or at least I haven't taken that many pics recently. Me an Sal stopped off at St Mary's Halt in the Forest of Dean on the way back from Wales, thought it was an abandoned station when we drove past but it's actually used by a bunch of rail enthusiasts, made for a nice couple of hours chilled out mooching though.

And today the Theatre Royal, Hyde opened its doors for the Heritage Open Days. It's the third or fourth time I've visited over the years and I always enjoy having a look round this once grand theatre. It's in amazing condition considering it closed down in 1992, and from what I can gather it stands a good chance of being reopened within the next few years as well. Result.


M :->

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For fucks sake.

It's just the internet. Get over it.

M :->

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I've been a lazy twat...

..really I have. There's a world of difference between a blog and a website, people don't seem to expect a personal website to be updated quite so often as a blog, and this is one of the problem's with a blog, keeping it updated. Despite the fact I've been doing stuff I just haven't had the time or inclination to get stuff posted.

Anyway, with that said I'll give you a quick roundup of the shiz I've been up to over the last month or so, hopefully in the right order-ish. A three hour trip in Bunker, Warrington, disapointed to find some rather crude graffiti in there relating to a number of northwest explorers, ho-hum...


The Manchester drains meet, well, what started as a drains meet soon turned into a 'ooh, big mill, and a school' meet. Was a great day nonetheless and good to meet a few new faces from NWEX.


Had a return trip to The Works with Ric on the Bank Holiday Monday, did Inhospitable while we were there. Then a rooftop in the city centre with Bungle, I know, a rooftop ffs. Still, the views were nice lol


Followed by the 'catacombs' in Nottingham with Sal and Fairygirl, a quick mooch around the cemetery caves which were very reminiscent of the sandstone air raid shelters in Stockport.


I think that's the lot, if not, it'll do for now.

TnM :->

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Third time lucky...

..for anyone wondering what happened to northwestexploration it's gone. The new forum http://www.nwex.co.uk/ will be up and running shortly, with luck.

Now, we need to see if we can manage to keep a forum going for more than four months.

M :)

***EDIT*** Blogger is being a twat with the link above, just copy and paste it into your address bar.

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Cathedral Steps, Manchester...Errrmm..

It's difficult to think of a site that has caused more arguments, more aggro, more falling out and hassle than Cathedral Steps. Yeah, the access comes in two flavours, easy, or a bit harder. But I'm really struggling to understand why people have felt so protective over this one.

Fair play to Userscott and Stepping Lightly for their sterling efforts in finding a way in in the first place, it's pretty interesting to say the least, but for me, that was where the interesting bit ended. It's a fooked up old air raid shelter under the streets of Manchester, sure, there are some nice remnants left over from the Second World War, I liked those bits, the posters, signs and whatnot. But maybe I've missed the 'interesting boat', maybe I've seen too many pictures, too many 'reports'. Maybe I've seen too many online arguments and disagreements about who should and shouldn't be allowed to see it.

Maybe I've overdosed on Cathedral Steps, in the same vein as Fletcher's paper mill or High Royds Hospital. Maybe people are too keen to follow in the steps of others and follow them too soon and too often.

I'm not blazing a trail, far from it, just quietly working my way through things, Cathedral Steps is off the list and in my opinion, it really wasn't worth the wait.

Mendo :)

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Works for me...lol

A chance to escape from the baking streets of Manchester for an hour or two saw me taking in the many marvels of The Works storm sewer overflow in scally-central, Collyhurst.

The outfall is HUGE (with a capital HUGE) and you can't fail to be impressed by its size, I wonder if every other drain explorer had the same excited feeling as me when I first saw it in the flesh? 'Tis an amazing thing to leave lying around by the side of a river.

It's a feature packed place too, with bricked up tunnels, stairways, hugeness (did I mention hugeness?), bridges, bits you can climb, bits you can trip up on, and as an added bonus, it's nearly all brick!

Let's not go on, it's great, it's been explored by dozens of other people, it's a cracking drain and one that I wish I'd visited sooner.

M :->

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Corn Brook, Manchester - Hardtothecore!

Mention the Corn Brook amongst drainers and most people will say something along the lines of 'Siologen said it was the most hardcore drain in town' or something like that. We took two trips of around five hours each to traverse the 5.6km of underground river, from the Bridgewater Canal to Gorton, a winding course taking in Hulme, Moss Side and the city centre.

So much has changed on the surface in Manchester, but underneath it's much the same as Siologen first reported back in 2004. Crawling, stooping, clambering, stopping, starting you name it this drain has the lot. Knee-deep sections of sticky, stinking mud to shallow trickles of water.

On the first trip myself, SparkUK and Bigjobs headed upstream from the near the outfall, barely taking the time to grab any pictures (between us we took around half a dozen), intent on putting in the miles, but we made slow progress, and in five and a half hours we only made it as far as the university, a short cab ride took us back to the cars, exhausted.

A month later we met up again and popped the same manhole we'd emerged from four weeks before. This time we were better prepared and had a better idea of what lay ahead of us as we struck a course westwards. Deteremined to find the infall of this underground Everest.

Concrete dominates the downstream section of the Corn Brook as it winds its way towards the city centre, upstream though is an entirely different ballgame, red brick tunnels of all shapes and sizes, some of them are huge, some of them are stoopy, wet, crusty and crawling height. All of it is great fun though!

So, it was another five hour trip underground, this time with pictures and I think we all agreed, the second half is SO much better than the first.

Hardcore as fook though.

Mendo :->

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Quick round-up, busy, busy, busy...

Keeping myself busy as ever, more underground stuff as well as a three plus hour topside explore in Derbyshire. Tis fun.

First up, Pipemare in Halifax, only the first strollable section, the nasty looking stoopy bit didn't look too appealing for the solo-Mendo. A grand way to spend a Friday evening after work, could have wasted it getting drunk in the pub, but where's the fun in that?

The following day, what started out as 'let's have a quick look at that place in Clay Cross' soon became a three and a half hour explore round Clay Cross Foundry, having FairyGirl in tow and trying to keep her quiet made the whole thing errm, well interesting, especially when we wandered into the still live part.

Anyhow, more underground stuff to come later this week, just hope it's not as stoopy as the first part we did a month ago. ;->

TnM :->

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Big Butts (talk about mudflaps...) - July 08

Clocked by Bungle a couple of weeks ago this culvert of the River Roch looked well worthy of investigation. Sadly from Bungle's recce pics the water looked pretty deep, the reality was, after a couple of days of dry weather it was an easy walk into a massive pillared chamber.

The culvert is actually made up of seven bridges spanning the Roch under Rochdale town centre, seven bridges that over the years have been connected and covered, making it one of the widest bridges in the world, cool, eh? And you thought Rochdale was only famous for the 'Gracie Fields lived here carwash'!!

From the infall we were both feeling this one, an inverted egg shaped sidepipe on the left leads to a sewer overflow processor, almost as soon as you walk in, the familiar whiff of something shitty greets the unsuspecting nostril (of nosey fame).


Carrying on further the huge tunnel splits into two, then three seperate tunnels before returning to two. More sidepipes leading god knows where await the busy explorer, before the tunnels once again rejoin into another huge pillared chamber leading to the outfall somewhere near the Police Station.

While this drain isn't spectacularly long the features and different constructions are cool as fook, I can see myself revisiting this one sometime soon...Damn Manchester, your drains are keeping me busy...

The name btw comes from the area outside the town hall, known locally as The Butts, nothing to do with Bungle's arse, nor mine.

TnM :->

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