The old hose pipe tower is part of the Broadford works complex. Most of you will be familar with the newer, iconic concrete tower, its been climbed many times by many people and its what everyone thinks of when you say 'hosepipe tower' but the works attulay has two! The older red bricked tower is often refered to as 'the chimney' even tho its blatently not a chimney its simply an older version of the concrete one!
Ive been to the Richards mills before but never got a chance to climb either tower so when we had a few hours to spare on a recent trip of epicness i had a choice, new tower thats easy and has been done loads or old tower thats scary, caked in shit and has never been climbed before. No choice but to get dirty really!!
The tower has a single ladder top to bottom with no cage so can be a little daunting at the best of times but coupled with god knows how many years of pigeon shit build up it really was quite tricky! I donned a resporator and gloves and headed on up. The first half of the climb was pretty staight forward with just a bit of build up of crap on each rung, the ladder seemed solid enough, attached the the iron frame of the lift witch runs up and down the shaft. Problems came about half way up where the poop had built up on some little paltforms behind the ladder and had dryed solid laving no way to grip the rungs. Alot of punching and kicking at it got it shifted in the end with huge chunks of dirt falling back down the shaft and making an awsome echoning thud as it hit the deck!
Reaching the top i managed to balance on some of the ironwork and get a few shots out of two of the small windows and open a small hatch out to nothingness, i didnt trust that mesh floor tho! Its not really about what was up there anyway, i could have had a good guess at that, but it felt good to get on and do something people have been talking about but not doing for years!
and a few from the works itself!
Ive been to the Richards mills before but never got a chance to climb either tower so when we had a few hours to spare on a recent trip of epicness i had a choice, new tower thats easy and has been done loads or old tower thats scary, caked in shit and has never been climbed before. No choice but to get dirty really!!
The tower has a single ladder top to bottom with no cage so can be a little daunting at the best of times but coupled with god knows how many years of pigeon shit build up it really was quite tricky! I donned a resporator and gloves and headed on up. The first half of the climb was pretty staight forward with just a bit of build up of crap on each rung, the ladder seemed solid enough, attached the the iron frame of the lift witch runs up and down the shaft. Problems came about half way up where the poop had built up on some little paltforms behind the ladder and had dryed solid laving no way to grip the rungs. Alot of punching and kicking at it got it shifted in the end with huge chunks of dirt falling back down the shaft and making an awsome echoning thud as it hit the deck!
Reaching the top i managed to balance on some of the ironwork and get a few shots out of two of the small windows and open a small hatch out to nothingness, i didnt trust that mesh floor tho! Its not really about what was up there anyway, i could have had a good guess at that, but it felt good to get on and do something people have been talking about but not doing for years!
and a few from the works itself!