Sunday 22 August 2010

In My Sights

"In My Sights" is a giant sewage storage tank in Greater Manchester.

When I say "giant" I mean GIANT. This place is huge.

Visited with nckt and ConcreteJungle. CJ made his first visit a few weeks back. A lot of safety rails saving workers from an 80ft drop into raw sewage had been removed by pikeys before he visited, but when we opened the same manhole on our joint visit we were in for a surprise.

The lid lifted, flies, heat, steam and the horrible stench all billowed out.

"In you go" suggests ConcreteJungle.

nckt and myself look at each other.

"Err... how?"

The pikeys who had removed the safety rails had been back and taken the ladder that had been bolted to the wall. There was now a 20ft gap between the manhole and the platform we wanted to get to. Luckily, the place was vast enough to have about 5 or 6 other options.

Many grated off, some locked, we eventually got lucky and found a ladder beneath one manhole. Only this ladder was roughly 80ft in height and completely exposed to the drop.


Leaning back on this ladder to avoid the debris and raw human waste caught on the rungs was terrifying and disgusting in equal measure.


Wading through raw sewage, slipping on the sloped concrete floor and getting used to a smell that could only be described as "Ungodly" was all part of the fun.




Unfortunately my pictures only really showed the filth and not the scale of the place. Check out ConcreteJungle's pics (http://substormflow.blogspot.com/2010/06/in-my-sights.html) to truly understand the scale of this epic shit tank.