.

mmu crane

2010-08-08T18:08:00.003+01:00

so my night with carabeener and ed took a bit of a turn for the worse when

we got spotted scaling the largest crane on the mmu campus in manchester.

i had wanted to do this crane for ages,

but unfortunately as soon as we got to the top, we spotted security hovering all

around the perimeter of the site.

upon making our way down, we made a bit too much noise, and we met the lovely security guards

upon exit.

only got one photo, still glad i have done it though.

two cranes in one night isn't such bad going...

redbarn

2010-08-07T19:38:00.004+01:00

redbarn drain.

thanks to concretejungle for taking me

ice plant crane

2010-08-06T20:10:00.002+01:00

JG's first crane. aww

the works

2010-08-06T20:07:00.001+01:00

work it

hulme flumes little brother

2010-08-06T20:04:00.002+01:00

beautiful bricks underneath the city centre streets.

you missed

2010-08-06T20:01:00.002+01:00

you missed it.

tabacco factory

2010-06-27T15:45:00.004+01:00

after a night at gullivers world with scott, yaz and merry we headed back to manchester, split up and i had some time to kill;

after mooching around in the city looking at some stuff i had wondered about for a while and some other bits that i have been looking at in recent weeks. decided it was nap time, the sun was up so i headed over here and had a little sleep up there for around 2/3 hours in the sun. lovely stuff.

imperial point

2010-06-24T02:36:00.003+01:00

apartments. another view;

river street

2010-06-19T20:31:00.004+01:00

not been back since getting a better camera. still don't get tired of this place

shouts to Ed and Nick

the grand

2010-06-15T19:31:00.001+01:00

a-class blagging.

blackfriars house

2010-06-15T19:09:00.001+01:00

sidedraught induction

2010-06-11T23:32:00.003+01:00

visited with dan helsing.

renaissance hotel, lower roof

2010-06-09T23:40:00.004+01:00

hooked up with some new guys in manchester. only shot the first bit

shouts to sneak, reddood, lazlo, agour, hiddenshaddow,

buddah, blino, yaz, scott, dahmer, zak etc.

stalybridge police station

2010-06-07T00:42:00.003+01:00

visited a police station,

without getting arrested!

city gate

2010-06-05T00:44:00.000+01:00

apartments. it was raining;

quadrangle

2010-06-05T00:35:00.000+01:00

boring roof. roof gardens!

peter house

2010-06-05T00:14:00.000+01:00

visited with agour, then later with gone. brand new.

debenhams part 2

2010-06-02T23:52:00.000+01:00

so i met JG and yaz today in manchester for fun and games. we did debenhams. my second go, their first.

here it is

lowry footbridge

2010-05-25T02:41:00.000+01:00

hooked up with JG for an evening of epic plans. needed to kill some time. climbed a bridge. results follow.

our plan for later was ditched due to too much activity, but we will be back.

shouts to the pro's, players, and the haters

drains

2010-05-25T02:39:00.000+01:00

hooked up with toothdoctor to nail some drains. lovely stuff.

shouts go out to drtooth, for the lifts, the drains and the lolz

milan mission

2010-05-24T18:07:00.001+01:00

Milan, what can you say about Milan?

Except it's possibly one of the best cities in Europe. It's vast, it's busy, it’s warm, and it’s everything that Manchester hopes to be, all rolled into one. It was also the target on a weekend by me and my partners in crime Jim Gillette and babystrangeways.

We organised this trip to go and see one of our main men, who had moved over there to cause some trouble and further investigate their Metro system. It was this investigation that was the end of his Italian dream, and to cut a long story short, he sort of got caught investigating, and was promptly kicked straight out of Italy. This wasn't something we were going to let get us down. We pressed on, and got our tickets booked, and our dates set. We lost one man, but still we continued. Finally it was time.

I met up with JG in Manchester; we were both a fair bit excited about what lay ahead. A quick call to our female counterpart and the wheels were in motion. After seriously annoying a woman in a petrol station we drove to Liverpool airport, where we were met by a lovely sign stating that the parking would probably be much more than we planned for, and due to JG's poor research, we would more than likely have to part with double the money we had planned to. This wasn't going to get us down, we met up with babystrangeways and our first point of call was Burger King, where we said goodbye to horrible food for the weekend. We nailed security, hit the duty free shop and were soon on board our lovely Ryanair chariot. Next stop: Milan, Bergamo.

We landed to a wet, but warm Italian evening, found the coach, and an hour later we were stood next to the central station in Milan city centre. This place looked amazing!

We had to find our accommodation for the evening, and with a ragged map with a pen marking of where the unit was, we set out to find Via della Spiga. Around an hour of walking, and getting distracted, and finding babystrangeways' hostel, and we found the squat. We checked it out, and headed back out into the night, to ensure that BS got back OK. With that job sorted, myself and JG headed back, to get our heads down, it had been a long day.

Woken by pretty much anything that made a noise, we had the most on-edge sleep ever, but at around 9.30am the noise that woke us was most definitely something to be worried about. I was groggy, and didn't really know what was going on, but I was quickly informed by JG that there were, in fact, two Italian men in the building with us. Lovely stuff! We spoke to the guys who agreed to just let us walk away, as they had already called the police about someone living there, and they knew it wasn't us. We quickly packed up and left. In utter disbelief about how our day had started, we headed to the centre again to meet up with BS.
We headed for some food and for a walk around the city. We had a look around some sites that we wanted to look at, then myself and JG departed and went to have a look for some rooftops to play on.

Our first port of call was to become our home for the rest of the weekend. The Hotel Michelangelo stands tall just next to the central train station in Milan. It's not very pretty, but it's pretty tall, and offers some rather nice views over the city and into the distance to the Alps. We had a look around, took our photographs, and decided to leave. We took the decision to call it home, as it was nice and easy, and had minimal risk attached to it. We descended and within 10 minutes had crossed the square and were standing in front of Hotel Gallia.

Now, hotels are easy pickings no matter where you are. But we looked like tramps, and this was a 5 star hotel, that apparently is rather famous in the Italian hotel world, or whatever. Anyway, I reckoned we could, and didn't give JG much of a chance to argue, as I was running up the steps excitedly. With no trouble we were in the lift, in utter disbelief of how easy this was so far. Milan needs to step up its game! We found the roof and had a quick look, but, both agreeing that we were rather exposed on this roof, we opted to quickly get our pictures and leave. We ran back down, jumped in the lift and made our swift getaway. Me even saying ciao to the concierge! Brilliant.

We had another mooch, looking for sites we were interested in, and how to go about getting into them, and went to meet BS in the centre again, to get some food and have another look around.

This is where the days begin to get blurry. When you are spending literally a full day in a city doing a variety of different things, it is difficult to say afterwards when and where you did certain things. The memory is also affected. one thing I do remember is we ate something pretty nice, walked a hell of a lot, and we hit up a FANTASTIC little ice cream shop near Di Angeli Metro stop, and got some absolutely bang tidy ice cream for a few Euros.

At some point in this day I went mooching alone for a few hours while the guys rested. I hit up the Hilton, and the Four Point hotel, but I don't know what day it even was. Oh well...

We headed back to the centre, had a mooch round the Duomo, and the central Piazza again. By this time it was pretty late, so we headed off in our separate directions, and me and JG had another challenge - getting onto our hotel to sleep. This didn't prove too much of a problem, and in a matter of about 15 minutes we were all tucked up in our sleeping bags ready to get some well earned rest, ready for the next day. At this point, I have to tell you, that in the middle of the night, JG was woken up by voices and light. He was certain that we had been caught by hotel staff having a crafty smoke, or whatever. Regardless, these voices were right next to us, and he could see what he thought were cameras flashing. It turns out that these people weren't hotel staff, but in-fact some drunken tourists from Poland or somewhere like that, taking photos from the roof. They hadn't seen us though, which sort-of goes to show how amazing and hidden away our little spot under the roof crane was. My sleep was undisturbed by this and I woke up feeling rather fresh, compared to the sleepless night I’d had in the squat.

We met BS on time in the central square, and we went off again to have a look around. This time we travelled out on the Metro to San Siro stadium, to have a look around, and enjoy the sun some more. We had a look about, admired the extremely racist graffiti (I really don’t understand how the local authorities leave that stuff up!) and left for the metro, to get back to Milan. Skip forward a few hours and we were stood at the base of a huge building under construction, looking at potential access routes, which both JG and I had scoped out the previous day. This was our last night in the city, so we were going to make it count for sure!

We decided it was still a little too early to go wandering around this site, as it was overlooked by apartments, and there may be the usual headless chicken routine to try and find the way up, so we decided we would come back later on to have a fair old crack at this one. With that agreed we decided to have a quick look and agree on access for another large site that we had been admiring since we arrived. This site was HUGE. I would compare it to MediaCityUK in Manchester, but I would day the undeveloped area was probably the same again. The section of the site that held the main towers that were nearly topped out was our target, and access really couldn’t have been easier.

We scoped the street and were just discussing coming back a little later when we sort-of decided now was the time and went for the fence. We were being overlooked, it wasn’t very dark, and it was very open. We spotted some site supplies and some ducking and diving in and out of the shadows of these, and we were at the base of the concrete structure. We climbed in, and located some stairs, took them half way up where they stopped. We went across the site and found a second set of stairs, which luckily went as high as you could go. There we found a scaffold and a ladder, and within minutes we were at the top. WOW. This was amazing, standing there on the scaffold boards of the concrete section moulds for the walls of the building, we looked out over Milan. That view is certainly something that is going to stay with me. It was difficult to get any decent photos here, as the structure we were standing on was rocking about in the wind. We still managed to get a few, and we stayed up there a little longer, looking down onto the tops of cranes we would consider fairly large in Manchester.

We began our descent, which, as per usual took no time, we stopped to play about on some stuff and get some group shots. This was just too easy. No security, no cameras, no PIRs, all the things we see as being standard on a building site installation at home were nowhere to be seen in Italy. We hit the base of the building, surveyed our surroundings and started back on the same route we had used in. It was at one of our rest points that JG pointed out a man on a nearby apartment balcony stood watching us, with a phone pressed to his ear. Panic erupted in our group and split second decisions had to be made. We had no idea how long he had been there for, or how long he had been on the phone. Had he seen us on a higher floor? Had he seen us come in? Was he someone working on the site that was living next to it as part of the construction company? Who was he phoning? We didn’t know, and so agreed to assume the worst case scenario; that was that he had seen us some time ago, and the police were on the way.

Run. That was the only option at this late stage. We had to let go of our cover and bolt for the exit, which was well within sight, and about a 30 second sprint. We had no time to check for security, no time to check for anything, just head for the fence, and get onto the street. We did it, having to hurdle over steel and avoid obstacles clatter8ing about and making more noise than we would ever make, but we were out; disappearing into the Milanese night.

Walking back from that, I wanted to go back and check our little skyscraper. It had to be done, it’s by far the biggest structure, and this was our last night. What way to end a better trip?! I consulted JG and BS, but both were reluctant, as they were tired and thought perhaps we shouldn’t push our luck after our noisy escape from the previous site. I understood but still needed to have a go, I couldn’t live with myself knowing I’d walked away. A quick chat and some rearranging of the bags and gear and I was over the fence and into the fire door that we had spotted was open. This is where my plan quickly turned into a failure. I had entered a large unit that was separate to the main building itself, sort of like a large retail unit underneath an office block. I saw some plans on the wall, and sort of understood my location. I had adrenaline pumping through my body at this point but remained level-headed and decided to press on. I found my route and quickly referenced to the plans, and knew I would succeed if I could get to where I needed to be.

I darted across the room, trying to remain as silent as I could but everything was silent, and my legs being heavy caused my footsteps to be louder than usual. That coupled with the empty concrete room I was in did not help my predicament. I went through the lift room and to the outside of the site, next to a large glass window that looked out onto the main yard of the construction site. Oh, and also the security huts. I decided I had to try, so holding my breath I listened for any movement that might signal security were onto me. I could hear something that I dismissed as my mind playing tricks on me, just as I leant out to have a look before running I spotted someone. Not in the distance like usual, but stood no more than 6 feet away from me. He looked at me, and had a sort of puzzled look on his face, then shouted to me in fast Italian. I couldn’t even pick any of the words out of his sentence as I turned to run. I ran straight back out the way I came and back over the fence, then I advised JG and BS (who were still waiting outside for me) that we needed to leave fairly quickly.

As we made our way back to our rooftop bed I told them what had happened and we all agreed how lucky I was – had this been at home, I wouldn’t have bothered to check, just ran. We got back to the hotel roof, we lay talking about our weekend, and what we had achieved, and how good Milan was. I slept like a baby. The next morning, we woke up earlier, so as to avoid being spotted if any workmen were going to be on the roof – it was Monday morning after all! We went to grab some breakfast at a local café, and made our way to park. Here, we just sat out in the sun and chilled, enjoying our last day in this amazing city.

Milan, really… what can you say about Milan?

I know one thing for sure. I will not be a stranger!

In an unusual twist. I won't be posting any pictures of this trip online. Instead I have summed up my 4 days into this clip:

Massive shouts to Jim Gillette and Babystrangeways for being there.

Huge thankyou to scott for hooking us up when we were there.

milan

2010-05-24T17:39:00.001+01:00

Milan, what can you say about Milan? Except it's possibly one of the best cities in Europe. It's vast, it's busy, it’s warm, and it’s everything that Manchester hopes to be, all rolled into one. It was also the target on a weekend by me and my partners in crime Jim Gillette and babystrangeways.

We organised this trip to go and see one of our main men, who had moved over there to cause some trouble and further investigate their Metro system. It was this investigation that was the end of his Italian dream, and to cut a long story short, he sort of got caught investigating, and was promptly kicked straight out of Italy. This wasn't something we were going to let get us down. We pressed on, and got our tickets booked, and our dates set. We lost one man, but still we continued. Finally it was time.

I met up with JG in Manchester; we were both a fair bit excited about what lay ahead. A quick call to our female counterpart and the wheels were in motion. After seriously annoying a woman in a petrol station we drove to Liverpool airport, where we were met by a lovely sign stating that the parking would probably be much more than we planned for, and due to JG's poor research, we would more than likely have to part with double the money we had planned to. This wasn't going to get us down, we met up with babystrangeways and our first point of call was Burger King, where we said goodbye to horrible food for the weekend. We nailed security, hit the duty free shop and were soon on board our lovely Ryanair chariot. Next stop: Milan, Bergamo.

We landed to a wet, but warm Italian evening, found the coach, and an hour later we were stood next to the central station in Milan city centre. This place looked amazing!

We had to find our accommodation for the evening, and with a ragged map with a pen marking of where the unit was, we set out to find Via della Spiga. Around an hour of walking, and getting distracted, and finding babystrangeways' hostel, and we found the squat. We checked it out, and headed back out into the night, to ensure that BS got back OK. With that job sorted, myself and JG headed back, to get our heads down, it had been a long day.

Woken by pretty much anything that made a noise, we had the most on-edge sleep ever, but at around 9.30am the noise that woke us was most definitely something to be worried about. I was groggy, and didn't really know what was going on, but I was quickly informed by JG that there were, in fact, two Italian men in the building with us. Lovely stuff! We spoke to the guys who agreed to just let us walk away, as they had already called the police about someone living there, and they knew it wasn't us. We quickly packed up and left. In utter disbelief about how our day had started, we headed to the centre again to meet up with BS.
We headed for some food and for a walk around the city. We had a look around some sites that we wanted to look at, then myself and JG departed and went to have a look for some rooftops to play on.

Our first port of call was to become our home for the rest of the weekend. The Hotel Michelangelo stands tall just next to the central train station in Milan. It's not very pretty, but it's pretty tall, and offers some rather nice views over the city and into the distance to the Alps. We had a look around, took our photographs, and decided to leave. We took the decision to call it home, as it was nice and easy, and had minimal risk attached to it. We descended and within 10 minutes had crossed the square and were standing in front of Hotel Gallia.

Now, hotels are easy pickings no matter where you are. But we looked like tramps, and this was a 5 star hotel, that apparently is rather famous in the Italian hotel world, or whatever. Anyway, I reckoned we could, and didn't give JG much of a chance to argue, as I was running up the steps excitedly. With no trouble we were in the lift, in utter disbelief of how easy this was so far. Milan needs to step up its game! We found the roof and had a quick look, but, both agreeing that we were rather exposed on this roof, we opted to quickly get our pictures and leave. We ran back down, jumped in the lift and made our swift getaway. Me even saying ciao to the concierge! Brilliant.

We had another mooch, looking for sites we were interested in, and how to go about getting into them, and went to meet BS in the centre again, to get some food and have another look around.

This is where the days begin to get blurry. When you are spending literally a full day in a city doing a variety of different things, it is difficult to say afterwards when and where you did certain things. The memory is also affected. one thing I do remember is we ate something pretty nice, walked a hell of a lot, and we hit up a FANTASTIC little ice cream shop near Di Angeli Metro stop, and got some absolutely bang tidy ice cream for a few Euros.

At some point in this day I went mooching alone for a few hours while the guys rested. I hit up the Hilton, and the Four Point hotel, but I don't know what day it even was. Oh well...

We headed back to the centre, had a mooch round the Duomo, and the central Piazza again. By this time it was pretty late, so we headed off in our separate directions, and me and JG had another challenge - getting onto our hotel to sleep. This didn't prove too much of a problem, and in a matter of about 15 minutes we were all tucked up in our sleeping bags ready to get some well earned rest, ready for the next day. At this point, I have to tell you, that in the middle of the night, JG was woken up by voices and light. He was certain that we had been caught by hotel staff having a crafty smoke, or whatever. Regardless, these voices were right next to us, and he could see what he thought were cameras flashing. It turns out that these people weren't hotel staff, but in-fact some drunken tourists from Poland or somewhere like that, taking photos from the roof. They hadn't seen us though, which sort-of goes to show how amazing and hidden away our little spot under the roof crane was. My sleep was undisturbed by this and I woke up feeling rather fresh, compared to the sleepless night I’d had in the squat.

We met BS on time in the central square, and we went off again to have a look around. This time we travelled out on the Metro to San Siro stadium, to have a look around, and enjoy the sun some more. We had a look about, admired the extremely racist graffiti (I really don’t understand how the local authorities leave that stuff up!) and left for the metro, to get back to Milan. Skip forward a few hours and we were stood at the base of a huge building under construction, looking at potential access routes, which both JG and I had scoped out the previous day. This was our last night in the city, so we were going to make it count for sure!

We decided it was still a little too early to go wandering around this site, as it was overlooked by apartments, and there may be the usual headless chicken routine to try and find the way up, so we decided we would come back later on to have a fair old crack at this one. With that agreed we decided to have a quick look and agree on access for another large site that we had been admiring since we arrived. This site was HUGE. I would compare it to MediaCityUK in Manchester, but I would day the undeveloped area was probably the same again. The section of the site that held the main towers that were nearly topped out was our target, and access really couldn’t have been easier.

We scoped the street and were just discussing coming back a little later when we sort-of decided now was the time and went for the fence. We were being overlooked, it wasn’t very dark, and it was very open. We spotted some site supplies and some ducking and diving in and out of the shadows of these, and we were at the base of the concrete structure. We climbed in, and located some stairs, took them half way up where they stopped. We went across the site and found a second set of stairs, which luckily went as high as you could go. There we found a scaffold and a ladder, and within minutes we were at the top. WOW. This was amazing, standing there on the scaffold boards of the concrete section moulds for the walls of the building, we looked out over Milan. That view is certainly something that is going to stay with me. It was difficult to get any decent photos here, as the structure we were standing on was rocking about in the wind. We still managed to get a few, and we stayed up there a little longer, looking down onto the tops of cranes we would consider fairly large in Manchester.

We began our descent, which, as per usual took no time, we stopped to play about on some stuff and get some group shots. This was just too easy. No security, no cameras, no PIRs, all the things we see as being standard on a building site installation at home were nowhere to be seen in Italy. We hit the base of the building, surveyed our surroundings and started back on the same route we had used in. It was at one of our rest points that JG pointed out a man on a nearby apartment balcony stood watching us, with a phone pressed to his ear. Panic erupted in our group and split second decisions had to be made. We had no idea how long he had been there for, or how long he had been on the phone. Had he seen us on a higher floor? Had he seen us come in? Was he someone working on the site that was living next to it as part of the construction company? Who was he phoning? We didn’t know, and so agreed to assume the worst case scenario; that was that he had seen us some time ago, and the police were on the way.

Run. That was the only option at this late stage. We had to let go of our cover and bolt for the exit, which was well within sight, and about a 30 second sprint. We had no time to check for security, no time to check for anything, just head for the fence, and get onto the street. We did it, having to hurdle over steel and avoid obstacles clatter8ing about and making more noise than we would ever make, but we were out; disappearing into the Milanese night.

Walking back from that, I wanted to go back and check our little skyscraper. It had to be done, it’s by far the biggest structure, and this was our last night. What way to end a better trip?! I consulted JG and BS, but both were reluctant, as they were tired and thought perhaps we shouldn’t push our luck after our noisy escape from the previous site. I understood but still needed to have a go, I couldn’t live with myself knowing I’d walked away. A quick chat and some rearranging of the bags and gear and I was over the fence and into the fire door that we had spotted was open. This is where my plan quickly turned into a failure. I had entered a large unit that was separate to the main building itself, sort of like a large retail unit underneath an office block. I saw some plans on the wall, and sort of understood my location. I had adrenaline pumping through my body at this point but remained level-headed and decided to press on. I found my route and quickly referenced to the plans, and knew I would succeed if I could get to where I needed to be.

I darted across the room, trying to remain as silent as I could but everything was silent, and my legs being heavy caused my footsteps to be louder than usual. That coupled with the empty concrete room I was in did not help my predicament. I went through the lift room and to the outside of the site, next to a large glass window that looked out onto the main yard of the construction site. Oh, and also the security huts. I decided I had to try, so holding my breath I listened for any movement that might signal security were onto me. I could hear something that I dismissed as my mind playing tricks on me, just as I leant out to have a look before running I spotted someone. Not in the distance like usual, but stood no more than 6 feet away from me. He looked at me, and had a sort of puzzled look on his face, then shouted to me in fast Italian. I couldn’t even pick any of the words out of his sentence as I turned to run. I ran straight back out the way I came and back over the fence, then I advised JG and BS (who were still waiting outside for me) that we needed to leave fairly quickly.

As we made our way back to our rooftop bed I told them what had happened and we all agreed how lucky I was – had this been at home, I wouldn’t have bothered to check, just ran. We got back to the hotel roof, we lay talking about our weekend, and what we had achieved, and how good Milan was. I slept like a baby. The next morning, we woke up earlier, so as to avoid being spotted if any workmen were going to be on the roof – it was Monday morning after all! We went to grab some breakfast at a local café, and made our way to park. Here, we just sat out in the sun and chilled, enjoying our last day in this amazing city.

Milan, really… what can you say about Milan?

I know one thing for sure. I will not be a stranger!

the haçienda

2010-05-13T03:27:00.000+01:00

"the haçienda must be built"

britton house

2010-05-12T01:12:00.000+01:00

only two people i know of have done this before. and that wish with a base jumper or two in tow. this is my best rooftop to date.

solo visit. amazing views

city inn, sunset

2010-05-12T01:09:00.000+01:00

sunset has to be one of the best times of the day for rooftopping. that and sunrise, especially when you get these sort of colours

another solo. i love doing this on my own.

debenhams

2010-05-11T02:05:00.000+01:00

debenhams, manchester. solo visit just before closing time.

shouts to those that busted it recently and inspired me to get up here now.

st james building

2010-05-11T01:53:00.000+01:00

solo visit to st james building mancheser.

shouts to gone for the direction

digger lolz

2010-05-07T04:05:00.000+01:00

it's just pure fun climbing diggers when you're wearing waders...

the batcave

2010-05-07T04:02:00.000+01:00

The Batcave

This culvert was discovered by myself, Dan Helsing and Jim Gillette.

All credit due to Dan Helsing for his dynamite research on this part of the world, and the water which runs through it!

This culvert is where the Wilson Brook flows underneath some industrial units in the Hyde area of tameside. It is the last culverted section of the brook before it infalls just downstream into the River Tame.

Some lovely old brickwork, a nice bend in the middle, and some lovely bats for company! Jim Gillette LOVES bats!

onwards...

hyde falls.

2010-05-07T03:52:00.000+01:00

Hyde falls, discovered by Dan Helsing and nckt.

Orginially visited by myself and Dan Helsing last night at stupid AM after wadering up a small brook over and under a lot of stuff. In total we discovered 3 culverts. The other two of which either one of us will report on in due course. It was a busy night!

We discovered the infall to this drain, and originally thought it to be a bridge, until we heard a rather familiar sound soming from inside, and saw that there was no light coming in from the other end. In we went, a huge brick chamber which led in about 40M or so, and then split off into two sepperate tunnels, one large one and one small one. Firstly inspecting the smaller of the two, passing an amazingly high manhold access ladder, we had to stoop a little as the pipe seemed to shrink a little. Eventually this pipe bends to the left and abrubtly ends where the water flows into a large chamber. Knowing that there was no way down into the chamber and it being a little difficut to light and see into from this angle, we opted to back track and check out the bigger tunnel, as this seemed to be leading onto the chamber too. We followed the bigger tunnel in about 50 or so meters, and again were standing on top of a large water fall, again into the same chamber. There being no way down, we left it for the night (as it was getting close to 3AM) and decided to come back for the outfall on another evening.

Fast forward to tonight; We met up with Jim Gillette who was very interested in our new find, and decided eventually that we would try and find the outfall for the main chamber. After some research the previous evening by both myself and Dan Helsing we had a rough location of an outfall, so decided to head over there. The plan was somewhat scuppered at this point, as the outfall seemed to be lost under a building site where some new houses are being constructed. We followed the road down to the River Tame, where we knew Wilson Brook fed in, and decided to walk up to find the infall that way. We dropped in, and found ourselves at another interesting culvert that none of us has ever seen before. We followed this culvert through the the infall, and then found outselves back in the open. Another couple of mintues later we found ourselves at a large concrete box section that led underground, and due to our research we knew that this had to be our outfall.

Following it inwards a couple of meters we found a large waterfall set into the concrete on the left hand side, which seemed to be coming from a plughole above. This was a sight in itself, spending a few minutes admiring this, and taking some photos, we decided to crack on and follow the flow upwards towards what we now knew had to be the chamber we had seen the night before from above. We were not dissapointed. After crawling over rocks, and nearly suffering some wader breach in the deeper sections of the flow the smaller stone pipe which the concrete box section had turned into opened up into an impressively large chamber featuring a plug hole directly above us, and two waterfalls at the far end which we instantly recognised.

The chamber was amazing to see, and this is one of, if not the best drain I have done, or seen so far. The only thing lacking in there was that there was no brickwork to be seen, only light stone and sandstone, which is what the chamber was hollowed out from.

Next, a little bit of information. The Wilson Brook flows down through Hyde and eventually reaches the River tame in the more northern area of the town. This culvert is 114 meters from the infall to the falls, and around another 120-150 meters from the falls, through the chamber until its eventual outfall.

Enjoy...

mines

2010-05-04T02:37:00.001+01:00

here is jim gillette, in a mine.

big doesn't even come close...

foxdenton drain.

2010-04-29T15:24:00.000+01:00

a drain. near oldham. here it is:

cookie culvert

2010-04-29T15:17:00.000+01:00

this one was discovered a while back by jim gillette and gone. hooked up with yaz and jg, and did this one. its a bit small mind!

palace hotel, manchester

2010-04-29T15:13:00.000+01:00

the palace hotel is an amazing building, on oxford road in manchester. one of the first things you see as you enter the city will be the beetham tower, closely followed by the age-old clock tower and red glow of the palace hotel. been a few times. finally got into the clock tower a few nights ago.

big ups to jim gillete, morse, yaz and babystrangeways

Malmaison Hotel, Manchester - April 2010

2010-04-15T09:58:00.000+01:00

Hooked up with Ojay briefly to do this one, he didn't have much say as I was straight in and hitting the lifts (lovely lifts!)

I have wanted to do this one for ages, as I really like the building, spotted another few from up there to hit too, so watch this space ;)

Ramada Hotel, Manchester - 2 visits

2010-04-15T09:41:00.001+01:00

First visited this one last Friday with Gone, Jim Gillette and Urban Warrior. Big thanks to Gone for leading the way.

Second visit was a solo, just to get a shot of the Gardens as night was drawing in. A not so chilled rooftop, due to the fact that people have been arrested coming down from there. Anyway, onwards:

the edge, again

2010-04-10T22:53:00.000+01:00

possibly the millionth time i have been up here. certainly not a rooftop to get bored of though...

took ojay up for his first go.

parkers apartments

2010-04-10T22:49:00.000+01:00

visited parkers apartment building by my onesies.

rooftopping + fisher price soundsystem.

2010-04-10T22:05:00.000+01:00

this was no ordinary friday. hooked up with Gone, Jim Gillette, Appo, Yaz, Scott, Dan Helsing, Babystrangeways, urban warrior, dahmer, josh, turford, and many more. hit some rooftops in town on friday night, then hit an outdoor rave. then got back to manchester and got straight back on the rooftops game, searching for a roof for sunrise. got food, and sunbathed on number one deansgate.

sun, fun, raves, scares, airhorns, climbing, introductions, old faces, drives, tunes and your mates. oh, that and the perfect summers day that materialised itself for us to sunbathe on number one deansgate.

manchester is just where it's at!

pictures, in no order whatsoever.

so...

2010-04-09T04:06:00.000+01:00

so indeed, been on some cool stuff the past few nights, and a good weekend is planned. here's a snapshot for now, courtesy of jim gillette...

soon.

the tube

2010-04-07T02:08:00.001+01:00

The Tube is a nightclub in a set back area of Manchester. By no means out of the way, more of a hidden gem. Visited with Jim Gillette, Gone and Dan Helsing.

First real play with my new camera.

this last shot is from the building above. but i like it, so it's on the end of this.

backlog complete!

2010-04-02T18:45:00.001+01:00

right, that's what i've got so far. from now on, i'll update as and when...

the edge, manchester

2010-04-02T18:31:00.000+01:00

went for a mess about on one of the two 'edge' apartment building...

shouts out to rookie, gone and appo for being there.

one more from that day

2010-04-02T18:30:00.001+01:00

bigjobs took this shot of me as we were walking to hickson & welch, it's tip top.

after hickson & welch

2010-04-02T18:27:00.000+01:00

i did this...

massive thanks to bigjobs for setting me up with the equipment again and taking the photo.

hickson & welch, castleton

2010-04-02T18:14:00.000+01:00

visited this place on a glorious day with bigjobs. massive 47 hectare site in castleford, half of it is demo'd now, but what's left is awesome. lots of pics, there's even more (i took over 150!) but this pretty much covers it. big thanks to bigjobs for the ride. even if he did fall asleep!

drains

2010-04-02T17:58:00.000+01:00

had my first drain experience in the lovely gripper drain. later went to arachnaphobia and experienced wader fail. shouts to JG for showing me around. shouts to dan for driving and big shouts to both for the pics...

original plan was some big drains, but rain stopped play so we stayed local.

lifts and number one deansgate

2010-04-02T17:45:00.000+01:00

hooked up with Jim Gillette and Yaz, and we went on some badman lift surfing, dopping some quality drum and bass for the passengers as they made their way in/out of their apartment.

shouts to Jim Gillette and Yaz for the pics, and a quality night.

more random

2010-04-02T17:39:00.001+01:00

shouts to morse for the last pic, and the gear!

crane. ancoats, manchester

2010-04-02T17:32:00.000+01:00

so bigjobs, over and myself went and climbed a crane. then abseiled off it.

all of these pictures were taken by bigjobs, because i fail at owning a good camera. massive respect to over and jobs on this one, to both for helping overcome to barriers and to bigjobs for supplying me yet again with equipment!

random

2010-04-02T17:30:00.001+01:00

random images from my hard drive...

shouts to yaz, sal, ojay, gone, rookie, appo, scott. firstly for taking the pics, and secondly for making it happen..

dovestones.

2010-04-02T17:26:00.000+01:00

went on a nice walk. this pic was taken. i like it...

river street and MEN arena

2010-04-02T17:20:00.000+01:00

hooked up with appo. did some tops.

first pic is courtesy of appo.

volcrepe mill, glossop

2010-04-02T17:15:00.001+01:00

some pics are credit of hiddenshaddow

premier inn, manchester

2010-04-02T17:04:00.000+01:00

everyone starts somewhere, and for a lot of people this is the beginning.

start

2010-04-02T16:55:00.000+01:00

so i created this blog and now i have decide to collate all of the stuff ive done in the past few months to put on here. bear with me while i sort it out. there is a lot!