Red Barn drain, chadderton, near oldham, 26/05/08

Visited with thenewmendoza.

Ive been wanting to do this drain for a long time, we had a failed mission infact about 4 weeks ago, so we did foxdenton drain instead!!! Anyhow the fails were due to the council, kindly fiting a HUGE padlocked steel gate over the E/E point, so it was a nogo anyhow, about a week ago i saw a report from here on Derp, hmmmmmmmmm i thought, i wonder if...................

Jump on a few days and MENDO had done a report on it on NWE!!! shit i thought, id better do this quick then as it wont be long before they lock it again!!!

so a quick text to mendo last night, and the plans were in place!!all i can say about this place is WOW, its really amazing inside, it changes shape every 50 yards or so, its everything from cathedral tall to stooping low, RCP, bricks, stone and iron pipes all make this place up, i think it should be renamed to HEINZ drain 'cos it really has got 57 varieties!! so we meet up outside the beast, with me, late as usual and set off up the pipe, "well get to the top, and take pics on the way back" i said, and with mendo agreeing, we headed up the pipe as far as we could get.now i say this because this drain is what is known as a "shrinker" Ie it gets smaller and smaller till you hit a point where you cant get any further, and it is at this point we start the pics with mendo, seeing if we can get any further!!

we obviously couldnt as it toooooo narrow, so we headed back taking pics all the way!!

this is looking back down the pipe we had just come up, note the big pile of iron under one of the outfalls further down, this stuff is ROCK hard! this next pic is of an brick inverted egg, its only small, and apparently leads to a sewage overflow

then the brick pipe opens out into a stone built chamber

Then it closes dow AGAIN, into a stone pipe, with a funny iron ceeling!!

Then another suprise, a HUGE brick inverted egg, this is a good spot for the group shot methinks!!

then down the RCP, you see int he last shot, that opens out into a funny shaped bit, that shrinks again, it looks like this bit is on the point of collapse ;)

then thankfully, the way out apppears in the distance!! *phew*!!!

Manchester, Cathedral Arches air raid shelters!!

Now then, here i have a rare treat for you people tonight!! i have FINALLY been down the cathedral arches in Manchester, well over 12 months after stepping lightly discovered the entrance to these beuties ive finally cracked it!! and boy oh boy was the wait worth it, There has been a HELL of a lot of speculation going on about this place of late, with certain parties pettily attempting (and failing) to lock access and selfishly keeping the site to themselves, and when local well established explorers dont get the chance to see them, BUT people travelling from far and wide do, the line has been crossed and it no longer is fair. add to this the lies about the access to the entrance, and the unwillingness of other so called explorers to help or show these to anyone outside of there own elitest little click, it all adds up to a HUGE headache im sure you will agree!!

Enter andyj23uk, and bigjobs, they devised a cuning plan to make the arches accessible to ALL explorers without jeapordising the site and without making it too obvious what we were up too!! a HUGE thanks goes out to these lads in getting this sorted and it just shows how easy it would have been for "other" people to do this to get us in!! Oh and before you all start bitching that we used the soft entrance i would like to catergorically state here, that we did not, we did it the proper way!!

Anyhow present on the day were as follows, andyj23uk, big and littlejobs, sparkuk, dodge, havoc, gibbo and myself!!

enough ramblings now and on with the pics!!!

All in all it has to be said this was a proper evening out, i thououghly enjoyed it, and if it wasnt for my late arrival i would have had a LOAD more pics!! needless to be said, me and the arches WILL do battle once more!!!

bungle