These have been done to death by many people better than me previously but I hope you'll indulge me as I cobble together some photos spread over three separate visits in March and April 2015 with some ramblings.
History
Surely you all know this by now? Built way back in the late nineteenth century in order to re-route the Middlesbrough-Whitby-Scarborough railway away from the cliffs (the original plan will be discussed later in the report), these two tunnels are now the best part of 130 years old and in pretty good nick, all things considered. They last saw rail traffic in 1958 and have been abandoned ever since.
Kettleness Tunnel
The shorter of the two tunnels at only 308 yards yet with a curve inside that means you do experience true darkness briefly as you journey through.
North portal in the 1950s:
And now:
The tunnel is surprisingly colourful inside with far less soot and mess than its neighbour: in this shot, you see the curve in the tunnel (looking back towards the north portal) and the adit to the east that runs out the cliff edge.
This adit was used to clear spoil from the tunnel and this was then dumped out at the cliff edge - rumours abound that this adit intercepted an old jet working (and you can certainly still see plenty of jet in the roof and walls as you traverse the roof fall inside the adit). Whatever its real purpose, there has been a roof fall in the past but the whole adit can be passed through to arrive at the cliff edge.
Running at right angles to the adit entrance is the old proposed course of the original railway on a fragile shelf above the North Sea (more on that later).
Travelling back through the adit, it's a short journey to the south portal of Kettleness Tunnel.
Compare this to the scene when the tunnel was in use:
Again, you can see the shelf that was intended to carry the original railway in the right background. Lots of this has been lost to the sea in the intervening years!
You now get a short stretch of outdoor walking through the gnarled trees and bramble bushes that have sprung up over the last 60 years before you reach the north portal of Sandsend Tunnel.
There was a major portal collapse here in 2008/2009 but you just need to pick your way over a mound of earth, stone and twisted reinforcing rail to get into Sandsend Tunnel.
Sandsend Tunnel
This is what the north portal looked like after the line was abandoned in the 1950s. You can already see the distorted stonework in the arch - steel rails were inserted as reinforcement but the unstoppable forces of nature meant that it was only a matter of time before a collapse occurred.
Sandsend Tunnel is a real Jekyll and Hyde of a tunnel - fantastically dark, dry and sooty for the first half (which makes photography hard as it soaks up all the light you can throw at it) then lighter but muddier, wetter and grimmer for the last half leading up to the south portal. In the tunnel, there are two side adits leading off to the cliff edge (more later) and five huge ventilation shafts which are pouring with water for most of the year (except the southernmost one for some strange reason).
This is the northernmost ventilation shaft and the rubble that has accumulated at its base:
The two adit entrances look like this (northernmost first followed by southernmost):
The northern adit must have suffered a collapse at some point as the point of light marking the cliff exit can no longer be seen - the woodwork around the beams and shutters here is like soft plasticine and the floor is deep sucking mud so I didn't go into the northern adit any further - I did explore the southern one however after travelling through the rest of the tunnel.
As you get past the halfway mark, the soot seems to disappear and you get fantastic calcite formations and some spectacular stalctites:
It gets much wetter here too and there is much sticky orange mud on the floor.
There is also the sad sight of some bulging and shattered brick and stonework further down in the tunnel as time and water ingress take their toll:
The final ventilation shaft is a beauty as it's not pishing water down like a waterfall - which means you can get right underneath and get some shots up:
The southern adit
As previously mentioned, I really didn't like the look of the northern adit - rotten timbers, deep sucking mud and a lack of visible exit persuaded me to leave that one for another day. The southern adit has a clear line of sight to the cliff exit though so I headed off into that one with my tripod acting as my depth gauge for the mud and water.
Fifteen metres or so in and you're faced with a ladder that must have served some purpose in the past but it's hard to imagine what that could be as the roof timbers only have a very small void above before some more shuttering closes the roof in.
As you head out towards the cliff edge, thick mud gives way to water and there is more bracing for the timbers:
Five minutes of toiling through increasingly deep water gets you back in the fresh air and looking back into the surprisingly small cliff entrance (made smaller by landslips etc over the last hundred years or so):
A shot back in from the cliff entrance:
Heading back in, I was faced with some stunning ochre-coloured water where I had stirred all the thick sludge up on the way through earlier so dimmed my lights and let rip with a long exposure:
Once back in the main tunnel, I headed out through the north portal with the intention of following the old 'shelf' route of the original proposed railway line - cue a fight with brambles that has left me scratched to buggery and also resulted in the inadvertant loss of one of my Lee filter caps from my camera ....
You can see the shelf where the railway was intended to run until part of the cliff collapsed and it was decided to build the tunnels instead ......
And with that, it's time to sign off. Thanks for reading!
History
Surely you all know this by now? Built way back in the late nineteenth century in order to re-route the Middlesbrough-Whitby-Scarborough railway away from the cliffs (the original plan will be discussed later in the report), these two tunnels are now the best part of 130 years old and in pretty good nick, all things considered. They last saw rail traffic in 1958 and have been abandoned ever since.
Kettleness Tunnel
The shorter of the two tunnels at only 308 yards yet with a curve inside that means you do experience true darkness briefly as you journey through.
North portal in the 1950s:
And now:
The tunnel is surprisingly colourful inside with far less soot and mess than its neighbour: in this shot, you see the curve in the tunnel (looking back towards the north portal) and the adit to the east that runs out the cliff edge.
This adit was used to clear spoil from the tunnel and this was then dumped out at the cliff edge - rumours abound that this adit intercepted an old jet working (and you can certainly still see plenty of jet in the roof and walls as you traverse the roof fall inside the adit). Whatever its real purpose, there has been a roof fall in the past but the whole adit can be passed through to arrive at the cliff edge.
Running at right angles to the adit entrance is the old proposed course of the original railway on a fragile shelf above the North Sea (more on that later).
Travelling back through the adit, it's a short journey to the south portal of Kettleness Tunnel.
Compare this to the scene when the tunnel was in use:
Again, you can see the shelf that was intended to carry the original railway in the right background. Lots of this has been lost to the sea in the intervening years!
You now get a short stretch of outdoor walking through the gnarled trees and bramble bushes that have sprung up over the last 60 years before you reach the north portal of Sandsend Tunnel.
There was a major portal collapse here in 2008/2009 but you just need to pick your way over a mound of earth, stone and twisted reinforcing rail to get into Sandsend Tunnel.
Sandsend Tunnel
This is what the north portal looked like after the line was abandoned in the 1950s. You can already see the distorted stonework in the arch - steel rails were inserted as reinforcement but the unstoppable forces of nature meant that it was only a matter of time before a collapse occurred.
Sandsend Tunnel is a real Jekyll and Hyde of a tunnel - fantastically dark, dry and sooty for the first half (which makes photography hard as it soaks up all the light you can throw at it) then lighter but muddier, wetter and grimmer for the last half leading up to the south portal. In the tunnel, there are two side adits leading off to the cliff edge (more later) and five huge ventilation shafts which are pouring with water for most of the year (except the southernmost one for some strange reason).
This is the northernmost ventilation shaft and the rubble that has accumulated at its base:
The two adit entrances look like this (northernmost first followed by southernmost):
The northern adit must have suffered a collapse at some point as the point of light marking the cliff exit can no longer be seen - the woodwork around the beams and shutters here is like soft plasticine and the floor is deep sucking mud so I didn't go into the northern adit any further - I did explore the southern one however after travelling through the rest of the tunnel.
As you get past the halfway mark, the soot seems to disappear and you get fantastic calcite formations and some spectacular stalctites:
It gets much wetter here too and there is much sticky orange mud on the floor.
There is also the sad sight of some bulging and shattered brick and stonework further down in the tunnel as time and water ingress take their toll:
The final ventilation shaft is a beauty as it's not pishing water down like a waterfall - which means you can get right underneath and get some shots up:
The southern adit
As previously mentioned, I really didn't like the look of the northern adit - rotten timbers, deep sucking mud and a lack of visible exit persuaded me to leave that one for another day. The southern adit has a clear line of sight to the cliff exit though so I headed off into that one with my tripod acting as my depth gauge for the mud and water.
Fifteen metres or so in and you're faced with a ladder that must have served some purpose in the past but it's hard to imagine what that could be as the roof timbers only have a very small void above before some more shuttering closes the roof in.
As you head out towards the cliff edge, thick mud gives way to water and there is more bracing for the timbers:
Five minutes of toiling through increasingly deep water gets you back in the fresh air and looking back into the surprisingly small cliff entrance (made smaller by landslips etc over the last hundred years or so):
A shot back in from the cliff entrance:
Heading back in, I was faced with some stunning ochre-coloured water where I had stirred all the thick sludge up on the way through earlier so dimmed my lights and let rip with a long exposure:
Once back in the main tunnel, I headed out through the north portal with the intention of following the old 'shelf' route of the original proposed railway line - cue a fight with brambles that has left me scratched to buggery and also resulted in the inadvertant loss of one of my Lee filter caps from my camera ....
You can see the shelf where the railway was intended to run until part of the cliff collapsed and it was decided to build the tunnels instead ......
And with that, it's time to sign off. Thanks for reading!
and nice report.
although by the time i emerged the other end i may as well have gone swimming in there 
The cliff edge exit is impressive, you don"t get those often in Yorkshire 
