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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Sidedraught Induction - Limbotastic... ;->

It's days like Tuesday just gone that I thank fook I have so many drains on my doorstep, so many places I can lose myself for an hour or two, seeking solace below the surface, enjoying the silence and bubbling chatter offered at once by Manchester's below ground adventure playground.

I was using this as an opportunity to try out a couple of new toys, the oft spoke of in hushed tones 'uberfluoro' and a ten quid 'Maglite-a-like' from ALDI. Would be interesting to see how they shape up, and how the exposure times/aperture will differ from previous stuff.

This culvert is a funky old shapechanger with loads going for it from its damp entrance in the park to the huge sewer overflow into it, bricks and concrete, can't complain!

Anyhow, I have work to do so I'll keep it short and sweet, the lights work fine, what's next? ;->

Mendo :-)

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Bennerley Viaduct, Derbys. - FairyGirl's first explore...

Visited with Smileysal and FairyGirl, who at 4 years old actually moans less than Havoc in a drain, which is a bonus. For want of something to do on a Saturday afternoon we settled on this, an easy explore, but worth it for the marvellous Victorian ironwork viaduct and odd looks from people passing by on the trains below.

Constructed by German convict labour in 1877 it didn't even make it through 100 years of a working life, closed in 1973. Incredibly it was to be demolished but the outrageous cost of demolition at the time saved the 1400metre structure which is now Grade Two listed.

The funniest thing about this one was the fact that FairyGirl was less scared than Sal who was all for rushing over the span while me an FG were taking in the views and stopping for pics.

Was a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and FairyGirls first explore.

Mendo :)

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Cwm Coke - The Real thing...

...visited with Smileysal on a lazy Sunday before driving back from a great weekend in South Wales. We'd spent most of Saturday trying to acces a huge drain, resulting in me being dangled on the end of a rope into a MASSIVE (30metres from top to bottom!!) overflow chamber, sadly, there were no ladders, step irons or other access for the group so I was hauled out and I'll be honest, it was fu*king scary, but a massive buzz at the same time!!

After that we did another drain, Dunkin' Doe Nuts, no pics cos' I couldn't be arsed, was a cool little stroll under Ebbw Vale though, and interesting to see something different from the Manchester drains I'm more familiar with.

Saturday night was spent hardcoring it around a former MOD arms depot, the BBC film Torchwood in one of the buildings, it's a HUGE place, one to return to at some point too, hopefully in the not too distant future. Only took a couple of pics here, I was enjoying the company and explore too much to bother, I'll get 'em next time.

So, Sunday morning, I woke up with that feeling, the one that you get after a hard days exploring. The one where every muscle in your body is aching, when you're weary, filthy and tired. That feeling...

Me an Sal were gonna head back up north, but wanted to see Cwm Coke Plant before we left so, with directions from Sheep2405 and with warnings of the pot-shot taking security guard we rolled up to the former coke works. Tis' a huge place, we spent around three hours mooching around and even then didn't scratch the surface. Having spent most of my time recently taking pictures in the dark it was a wierd feeling poking about and enjoying shutter speeds below 10seconds and less.

Needless to say, I'll be heading back to South Wales before long...

Mendo :)

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