Cold Turkey - Saddleworth
First explore of the new year, and a very enjoyable one too. Seem to have had a quiet time recently, explored a lot of mines in the Lake District in August; but managed to lose all my photos! Injury and a general lack of time had curtailed a lot of plans for the rest of 2016.
Open doors, it would be rude not to have a look behind the key hole.
I've had an inkling that there was a culvert here for a few years, but it was just another one on the list of places to visit. I finally had a quick look in November, but the water levels were far too high to pop inside. Today was ideal, crap weather meant a stroll on the hills wasn't the best option. My daughter preferred watching a film rather than having a huge fire at the allotment. An idea window appeared to head down a drain and get my feet wet again.
Once inside the downstream end of the culvert was just brickwork. I love culverts which run under the old mills especially the sprawling mills up on the Pennines. They tend to have been built in sections bridging the stream; this usually means different styles of techniques used to construct the culvert.
The brickwork soon changed to nicely dressed stonework and I also encountered my first welly breach of 2017 (a good sign).
Not sure how I managed to get a shadow of a killer whale, but the culvert was of a reasonable height making the trip enjoyable.
A short section of cast concrete walls came up next, soon making a transition back to a stoned walled culvert.
The next stone section was also nicely dressed and pointed.
Some interesting deformation has started to occur to the walls at this point before the original section of the culvert is reached.
The upper section of the culvert is a far more rough, no pointing and large joints between the gritstone blocks. It still looks structurally sound though.
A small weir and deep pool now give an interesting obstacle on the way upstream, there is plenty of debris on the floor above this probably thrown in from the mill yard over the years.
The upstream entrance soon comes into view. Looking forward to see what lies beyond as I didn't manage to see where it came out before heading in.
Looking back at the entrance, the grill just partly covers the entrance here which is a good job given the heavy rainfall in November.
Looking up stream was an idillic 20ft waterfall, probably the main reason why I had never seen this end before. It essentially blocked any further movement upstream as it was as slippy as an eel dipped in Vaseline!
A fantastic way to start off the new year, good to be back in the drains again.
Cheers,
TLR.
First explore of the new year, and a very enjoyable one too. Seem to have had a quiet time recently, explored a lot of mines in the Lake District in August; but managed to lose all my photos! Injury and a general lack of time had curtailed a lot of plans for the rest of 2016.
Open doors, it would be rude not to have a look behind the key hole.
I've had an inkling that there was a culvert here for a few years, but it was just another one on the list of places to visit. I finally had a quick look in November, but the water levels were far too high to pop inside. Today was ideal, crap weather meant a stroll on the hills wasn't the best option. My daughter preferred watching a film rather than having a huge fire at the allotment. An idea window appeared to head down a drain and get my feet wet again.
Once inside the downstream end of the culvert was just brickwork. I love culverts which run under the old mills especially the sprawling mills up on the Pennines. They tend to have been built in sections bridging the stream; this usually means different styles of techniques used to construct the culvert.
The brickwork soon changed to nicely dressed stonework and I also encountered my first welly breach of 2017 (a good sign).
Not sure how I managed to get a shadow of a killer whale, but the culvert was of a reasonable height making the trip enjoyable.
A short section of cast concrete walls came up next, soon making a transition back to a stoned walled culvert.
The next stone section was also nicely dressed and pointed.
Some interesting deformation has started to occur to the walls at this point before the original section of the culvert is reached.
The upper section of the culvert is a far more rough, no pointing and large joints between the gritstone blocks. It still looks structurally sound though.
A small weir and deep pool now give an interesting obstacle on the way upstream, there is plenty of debris on the floor above this probably thrown in from the mill yard over the years.
The upstream entrance soon comes into view. Looking forward to see what lies beyond as I didn't manage to see where it came out before heading in.
Looking back at the entrance, the grill just partly covers the entrance here which is a good job given the heavy rainfall in November.
Looking up stream was an idillic 20ft waterfall, probably the main reason why I had never seen this end before. It essentially blocked any further movement upstream as it was as slippy as an eel dipped in Vaseline!
A fantastic way to start off the new year, good to be back in the drains again.
Cheers,
TLR.
) Was a nice one to spend some time in and play about with the lighting.
