Snakes & Ladders, Manchester
(Apologies for the shit pics, shot handheld in some festering river of shite)
For me this was the final piece of the jigsaw for here anyway..
I met up with Troubleuk who was keen to check out some local drain related shizzle, turns out he also had come across the same lid I had being trying to locate for a while now
CreditZ to Mendo for pointing me in the right direction here, as he'd previously poked about a couple of years ago but never actually ventured down
:To be honest I don't blame him, as after struggling to lift one beast of a lid, followed by a cloud of god only knows what filling the air the stench was insane
(Words fail to describe it having never experienced anything like, certainly wasn't the usual sewerfresh)
Infact it was that bad I was debating whether to even chance it at first, then I shone my torch down and I've never seen anything like it!
7ft down these step irons drops you into a chamber about 8ft wide
Once down there is a smaller vertical shaft which enters the chamber, and a warning sign
(In the end curiosity got the better of me)
Shining the mighty cree down, I could barely see the bottom,
this 45ft 'Ladder 'O Doom' was insane and appeared to be never ending.. Crack On
Heading down we left a good 10 ft gap between us, but having reached a third of the way I noticed one of the sections where the ladders jointed were un-bolted and protruding outwards [/Brownunderpants]
Nothing to do with pikey's here, the concrete was shot and the bolts had popped out..
Sweltering and struggling to breath in this strange atmosphere we were soon at the bottom of the shaft
The ladders came to an abrupt end, and as I looked down all I could see was ochre
and what I could only describe as a blanket weaved out of jamrags/bogroll and fanny plasters below
Wheres this Fucken' chain ladder 6ft from the bottom as described in the warning sign
..Oh wait
The shackles were corroded and I was convinced it wouldn't hold our weight, but we were soon down into a 2m CMP
Firstly we headed upstream through the misty CMP as the age old watercourse snaked around for a good 400m before breaching the wellies and turning back
(I've already been upstream of here from another nearby system so had no need to carry on as having already seeing the connection)
So we decided to head back downstream and checkout what was on offer
After more snaking about through the corrugated pipe,
it was eventually bodged with concrete by way of connection to this Victorian Horseshoe section
We only followed it down a few hundred yards, as the penny dropped where the final outfall was
I so wish I had made some effort to take my tripod down here, sure gives me an excuse to return...
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