I located these three more than two years ago, but the volume of water going into one and my sheer inability to find a way to access the other saw me only get into the latter two in May this year.
Greenock has a bunch of six drains, all mostly running steeply downhill. I found a few lesser tunnels that i only bothered snapping phone pics of, on the Cartsburn, two tunnels all riven, with either sets of stairs, or in the case of Upper Cartsburn, a seemingly never ending supply of them.
Nice Outfall but
The third random, i never got photos of, but its mentioned later.
The Little Hole was my consolation prize for failing that first time, a nice, easy, arched affair, with a small pit and infall grille.
What i ended up naming The Roaring Twenties (cos its got 20 loud steps) had a scary volume of water in it when i first looked and ill be honest, it looks scarier from above. On top of that id realised it had no easy downstream exit, outfalling into a very deep and exceptionally overgrown gully, so i shitcanned it until i got Cuban along at a time when there was less rain. It was a fun little jaunt, despite being barely 300m long.
Looking down the initial staircase
And up, with a flash .
And again except a time exp. from a much lower angle.
This infall... fall, was followed by a few other smaller sets.
Before reaching the awkwardly deep outfall.
With this one seen too, we moved onto Greenock Darkie. This thing sits elevated, 5 metres above a recently defunct Homebase Carpark (which was how we eventually got up to it, by scrabbling up some pretty fucking steep slopes), butted against a row of old houses, with this crazy arse Lade Bridge, crossing West Greenock Station. The drain seen in the u/s of this next second pic we explored, n it had a few interesting features, but the 3ft high stoop sections after them, killed off my desire to turn back for photos as id originally planned. The Lade Bridge was fun to finally get down to, as even though its elevated above the railway and the Homebase, the road it emerges from beneath is another four metres up.
Theres then a good bit of nettlebashing to reach the sluice that drops the burn down into the tunnel. I had hoped this would be within the tunnel, but there you go...
At one time the elevated area mightve been publically accessable. Theres remnants of a small bridge over the infall.
Once inside, it was a reasonably varied affair, if almost entirely flat, which was a shame, cos i'd hoped there might be falls or stairs within its larger confines.
It carried on a good 900m, through a variety of arched tunnels, before reaching a larger chamber.
After the chamber, it hunkerd down to become a boring new box section... Before shrinking to a fucking 3ft archway near the Clyde. This goes well in line with the habit of Scottish drains having shrunken outfalls, so we turned back, stopping to look at some of the calcium formations.
Greenock has a bunch of six drains, all mostly running steeply downhill. I found a few lesser tunnels that i only bothered snapping phone pics of, on the Cartsburn, two tunnels all riven, with either sets of stairs, or in the case of Upper Cartsburn, a seemingly never ending supply of them.
Nice Outfall but
The third random, i never got photos of, but its mentioned later.
The Little Hole was my consolation prize for failing that first time, a nice, easy, arched affair, with a small pit and infall grille.
What i ended up naming The Roaring Twenties (cos its got 20 loud steps) had a scary volume of water in it when i first looked and ill be honest, it looks scarier from above. On top of that id realised it had no easy downstream exit, outfalling into a very deep and exceptionally overgrown gully, so i shitcanned it until i got Cuban along at a time when there was less rain. It was a fun little jaunt, despite being barely 300m long.
Looking down the initial staircase
And up, with a flash .
And again except a time exp. from a much lower angle.
This infall... fall, was followed by a few other smaller sets.
Before reaching the awkwardly deep outfall.
With this one seen too, we moved onto Greenock Darkie. This thing sits elevated, 5 metres above a recently defunct Homebase Carpark (which was how we eventually got up to it, by scrabbling up some pretty fucking steep slopes), butted against a row of old houses, with this crazy arse Lade Bridge, crossing West Greenock Station. The drain seen in the u/s of this next second pic we explored, n it had a few interesting features, but the 3ft high stoop sections after them, killed off my desire to turn back for photos as id originally planned. The Lade Bridge was fun to finally get down to, as even though its elevated above the railway and the Homebase, the road it emerges from beneath is another four metres up.
Theres then a good bit of nettlebashing to reach the sluice that drops the burn down into the tunnel. I had hoped this would be within the tunnel, but there you go...
At one time the elevated area mightve been publically accessable. Theres remnants of a small bridge over the infall.
Once inside, it was a reasonably varied affair, if almost entirely flat, which was a shame, cos i'd hoped there might be falls or stairs within its larger confines.
It carried on a good 900m, through a variety of arched tunnels, before reaching a larger chamber.
After the chamber, it hunkerd down to become a boring new box section... Before shrinking to a fucking 3ft archway near the Clyde. This goes well in line with the habit of Scottish drains having shrunken outfalls, so we turned back, stopping to look at some of the calcium formations.
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