Visit 1: Febuary 2008
This was an unexpected explore, I had met up with some guys who'd come up from the south and this was the second site we did that day. I knew it had been well explorered in the past and that despite being now partitally demolished it was still a huge site.
We headed to the water treatment works first, wondered over the gantrys on top of the tanks. Lots of rusting valves, wheels and pipework, oil was sat on top of the water in some of the tanks. The whole area was nicely decayed, not so much trashed - just abandoned.
From there we went over to the cooling towers. Oddly, all built out of wood. Took extra care on this bit, wood tends to rot quicker than metal!! Inside the structure were lots of thin pipes and fins, and on the tops were large circular holes with fan motors in the middle. The fan blades were missing - they looked to have been sawn off, probably weighed in for scrap. Next to these large fans was a taller building, wooden still. There were stairs up and the exteriror of it, again wooden. They didn't feel 100% solid, and did wobble slightly. On top of the cooling tower was a nice view, and another couple of large cut outs for fans. From here I got my first proper look at the silos. I had seen them from the road, they looked huge then - and from here they looked even bigger. We headed back down the wooden stairs, and over the now toward what remained of the production floor.
It was dodgy ground, bricks and other debris, had to be careful of nails. We walked past some massive metal storage tanks that had been ripped open like tin cans. Wasn't too sure what was in them, but they stank. Looking closer at them, the metal wasn't at all thin - whatever had chewed through them must've had some power.
Approaching the silo I was just looking straight up at them, trying to deciede if I could climb up there or not. By the time we'd reached the base of them I'd made my mind up. Got my gloves, and head torch on. Ready. Heights aren't for everyone, so heading up to the top was just myself, Bubblehead, Hairy and Winchester. It was a sticky climb, a bit smelly too. Mixture of sugar and pidgeon poo. Lovely! Finally made it to the top and climbed out onto the roof off the silo. Took my breath away. I'm still getting used to heights, and this was the heighest i'd been on any explore.
The view was incredible, I could see for miles. The water treatment works we'd been at earlier looked so tiny, apart from the settlement ponds. I hadn't seen much of them from the treatment works - but could see them all now, they stretched on over a large area. The metal storage tanks that looked so vast as we walked past them looked like paint cans. I walked round the top of the silo and looked down at what used to be the production the floor. I was looking down on a large chinmey.. from the ground the chimney looked huge, and now i'm looking down on it. These silos are huge. After taking some time to get used to the height, took some photos of the view and then climbed up to the top of the roof and sat with the others. Took some photos from there, dropped back down to the to the lower level and the climbed back down to ground level.
After being on top of the silo we wanted to have a look inside the silo as well, so we headed into the rooms below them. Everything down here was covered in sugar, there was a conveyor belt which had a solid 1 inch thick slab of sugar on top of it. It ran the length of the rooms. The floor was covered in syrup, my boots were sticking to the floor with every step. We found the access hatch into the silo, and climbed up.
The acoustics inside the silo were crazy, massive echo. Looking up I could just make out the roof. 10 minutes ago we were on top of that. The silo was pretty much empty, but the bottom was still covered in sugar. We were stood on sugar. In a regular pattern accross the floor area were circular holes. They were funnels that lead to the room under the silo, that must've been how the sugar came out of the silo. Obviously there were no windows in here, the only light was from the torches we had. I only took one picture, mainly because I didn't want to cover my camrea in sugar. After the rest of the guys had finished taking pictures, we headed out the silo and off the site.