The Winchester

"Not all those who wander are lost" – Tolkien

Archive for the ‘Neb’ tag

London Gas

with 3 comments

They’re all slightly different. Be it their location in an otherwise empty field, sat adjacent to a busy road junction, or tucked away betweeen houses, they’re all still slightly different. Some are getting torn down now. We turned up at Kings Cross to try to climb the 130 year old structures but they were gone, pillars of metal stacked up on the ground, ready for removal. Upon finding out they were going to be reinstalled once the crossrail works under the site are completed, I felt a wave of elation. Somebody else cares! Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Winch

March 11th, 2012 at 12:30 pm

Antwerp Pre-metro

with 5 comments

The usual assumption about the Antwerp Pre-metro within the exploring community is that the ‘pre’ represents the fact it hasn’t opened yet. Not correct. The Pre-metro is actually a properly dug and operating metro system, which is just not running metro stock yet. During the IDM weekend, we followed Patch, Site and Jess down into the live network for a look around. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Winch

March 4th, 2012 at 8:23 pm

Posted in Trains

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Newport Transporter

with 3 comments

2012, the year of something else? I’d decided I wanted to do some different stuff in different places, and the Newport Transporter Bridge fitted the bill. Brad, Marc, Neb and Urban Fox joined me on the trip down the M4 for this adventure, at a place from which surprisingly few photos have appeared on the internet. Lets rectify that. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Winch

January 22nd, 2012 at 4:47 pm

Boat Party

without comments

Much to Otter‘s chagrin, ‘Verticality‘ has entered the vernacular of the current London ‘UE’ Set. Discussed at length on Placehacking, where Brad first coined the concept, it sits alongside ‘Edgework‘ and the much derided ‘Prohobo‘ as a term that wouldn’t neccesarily mean a lot to anybody else, but is in somewhat regular usage among this group of individuals. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Winch

October 3rd, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Posted in Social

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Saltley Gas Towers

without comments

August 2011

These were a change affair really, one of those things that just happens. We saw them on our approach to what we believed to be the Moonwalker culvert, but whatever we did in fucking up the identification of the buried river, this sure as hell was a big pair of monster gasometers looming out of the darkness of the night. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Winch

August 7th, 2011 at 9:39 pm

Posted in Infrastructure/construction

Tagged with

Rubix

with 2 comments

February 2011

It seems like ages now since we went to Rubix. Just a long brick pipe with a little junction at one end. It’s fed by the River Effra, long since buried under the streets of South London and turned into a sewer. Rubix itself is known as the South Western Storm Sewer, essentially there to collect the overflow from the sewer when it rains. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Winch

July 24th, 2011 at 11:03 pm

Posted in Drains

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Dereliction Fetish

with one comment

July 11

It was a nice experience, to delve into dereliction again. After months of construction, sewers, tunnels, trains and cranes, the prospect of a day of derelict places was starting to appeal and as such, the derpmaster general of the group put together a list of musty places to go in The Midlands.

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Written by Winch

July 7th, 2011 at 2:19 pm

Posted in Dereliction

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Vertical Limits

with one comment

April 2011

My own sense of reality struck as I harnessed up at the base of the jib. The City of London is a noisy city, sirens screaming at all hours of the day, and as Neb explained how he would lead up the crane, climb down and then allow me to top-rope up, my legs turned to jelly and cotton-wool mouth took over. As often as we big ourselves up on blogs and forums, it’s remakably easy to feel very small when faced with a new and intimidating task such as this. I withdrew, electing instead to play a supporting role in Neb’s climb by belaying for him.

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Written by Winch

April 19th, 2011 at 11:49 pm

Deep Level #5 – Down St Station

with 8 comments

February 2011

When news filtered quickly that a glitch had been identified at Down St station, 5 of us made our way down quickly to inspect. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Winch

March 24th, 2011 at 10:47 am

Posted in Trains

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Deep Level #6 – Bull and Bush

with 8 comments

March 2011

Probably the rawest of experiences on the underground one can undertake, a tunnel run in zero clearance. Gary, Neb and myself met with Otter, who’d taken the run before on a trip with Siologen back in 2009, in those days when we all knew a lot less about the system and how it operates. A few have been back in the last couple of years, and credit is due to all who have done this – it’s definitely a mental exercise rather than a physical one.

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Written by Winch

March 6th, 2011 at 12:56 pm

Posted in Trains

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