History
Haddon Tunnel was opened in 1863 and closed in 1967, as a result of the Beeching report. It was built to hide the railway from the Duke of Rutland, where the line passed Haddon Hall. The tunnel features five ventillation shafts along its length of 967m.
(Lazyily adapted from Wikipedia - more comprehensive history and further information about the construction of the tunnel can be found here)
The Explore
Visited with @HughieD who did all the driving and the finding, whilst I repaid the favour by providing light from my array of fancy solar powered gas lamps. After a bit of a climb through a barbed wire fence (in the process cutting my hand and realising we could have just gone around it after all) we made the walk along the route of the old railway line until we reached the tunnel portal. Spent a couple of hours inside, mainly involving standing still, waving torches around in the air, trying to light the thing up sufficiently. We started at the northern portal and ended at the south, because it's only polite... A nice wander, in excellent company.
Inny...
Outy...
Shake it all abouty...
Some sections of the tunnel are quite wet, with years of water dripping in from a portal above creating some interesting colours...
Taking photos of @HughieD taking photos of tunnels
Doing that thing where you set your timer and run in front of your camera, pretending to look at something in the sky for some reason...
This big vent is nice, isn't it?
And this smaller one, from below...
Growth...
Some idiot...
Full set here