St. Paul's

St Paul's tower, to use one if it's many names, is the tallest building in Sheffield; and as such, had been on my interest list for some time, especially since a report from Gone had highlighted the great rooftop ages ago. jazzywheelz had come close a little while back but got stumped at the final hurdle, so when a recent report from tweek came along, our interest was rekindled. tweek kindly offered some advice to jw, who in turn invited me along for a visit one night.
We could have picked a better night really, the rain was on and off and the wind was ridiculous (especially once up on the roof), but once we were stood outside we thought we may as well make the most of it and just go for it.
We spent a good couple of hours up there, waiting till it got dark to get some night-shots too, although I wasn't overly happy with the results of a lot of mine (another excuse for a visit I guess!); ended up with some shit and muck on my sensor somehow, and my 50mm wouldn't focus.

Video (which will be nowhere near as good as jw's) to follow if I ever get round to taking it off my phone...

A(nother) return to Park Hill.

There's something about Park Hill that I can't quite put my finger on, that keeps calling me back. I've done it three times now, none have been easy at all, but I can still see myself hitting it again at some point... Maybe it's the iconic status of the place, or just the cool view from the rooftops. Or maybe it's despite the stupid access, it's always a laugh.

The original plan was to meet up with jw, mstarmatt, aem, Muttley, tablets, and whoever else wanted to come, have a few beers and chill out on the roof. Things being what they are of course, it's impossible to get everyone together at the same time when you need to, and in the end only myself, jazzywheelz and tablets could make it out that particular night.
After various fails, and being chased off by an angry Eastern European chef, around town we took a long walk over to Park Hill, to at least recce the place for any upcoming group visit, should it happen.
With slightly easier access to compound sussed out (Can't remember if jw and Muttley figured that out on a recce themselves or tablets fresh eyes spotted it now!), we decided we may as well make (crawl/climb/stoop/sob) our way to the service tunnels and the roof while we were there.

I didn't bother with many shots, just enjoyed the view.

(For an ace shot of me enjoying said view, check out jw's flickr here.)

Sucker

A(nother) early finish at work, and with no one to run home to I decided to get back to Dyson's while the weather was good.
It's a really relaxed, easy site, with plenty of interesting paperwork and stuff to nose through. And with the sun shining through most of the place, it's just a cracking little explore.

May

May was pretty hectic for me, changing jobs, funerals to attend, holidays etc, but I managed to squeeze in some explore time and get back underground for the first time in ages.

Millsands Goit, or Kelham Island Goit (props to jazzywheelz for the research by the way), was a culvert I'd wanted to look at for ages, the outfall is bang next to work so I saw it almost every day, but it was always put off for something better. It had been explored before apparently, but since we couldn't find anything online about it, we claimed naming rights and settled on "Mini-tron" - anyone familiar with Megatron (the culvert, not the Transformer), will probably be able to tell why.

It's a culverted section of the Don, the creation of which essentially creating the original Kelham Island and acting as a mill race and power millwheels etc.
There's a section of open water, but we only looked at the underground parts. The original course has been altered somewhat by modern construction, and we were a bit unsure as to where the original outfall into the Don would have been - probably not where it is now; me and nightcaller had a look at a short dead end, a silty as fuck former outfall, last year, under Lady's Bridge, which may have been the original outfall for Millsands Goit, the water course running the length of the modern Millsands road.

Visited with jazzywheelz.
We jumped in around where the sluice would have been to control water flow through the wheels.

Running almost parallel to this is a 3ft rubbly zigzaggy passage, but it was so confined in there I didn't bother with any pictures.
There's then an open section leading into two fairly large arched infalls - the left hand one was very heavily silted, with not much water flow. The right hand one was quite impressive.

After maybe 100 yards, with conditions underfoot getting siltier (I did manage to get stuck once or twice!) we came across another small silted up stone archway.

At this point the two large arches converged into one.

The stonework is dropping to bits here, hence the next hundred yards of spraycrete.

There's another short open section, before two parallel 5ft rbp's outfall into the Don. My shots round this area were pretty poor though as it was pissing it down and my camera got a soaking...

So, not amazing, but another one ticked off that list.

April.

Managed to cross off two sites in April that I'd had my eye on for ages. The first being Ernest Wright, scissor manufacturers, and the second being the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Woodhouse.


I'd already had a solo attempt at Kutrite one night which ended in failure, but another idea I had about access paid off on a revisit with jazzywheelz, and we managed to squeeze our way in.
We were both very underwhelmed by the place, in fact jw didn't even get his camera out. I felt it was worth documenting as it's such an important site for Sheffield's industrial heritage.



In the 1970s, Sheffield boasted no less than 150 small scissor-making companies. Now there are just two. One of those companies, established in 1902, is Ernest Wright & Son (known as the more ‘modern’ Kutrite from the 60's up until the last few years). The other is William Whiteley & Sons.


Ernest Wright and Son, had only three skilled scissor-makers left at the start of 2010 but found a 20 year old apprentice to carry on their work and ensure the art of scissor making is not consigned to history. They moved to new premises on Broad lane, the first time in a long time that the company had not been located on Kelham Island and the company found a new lease of life. Not fantastic news for an explorer, as they took anything of interest with them in the move, but great news for the company and Sheffield’s industrial heritage.
Two great articles on Ernest Wright can be found here and here. The history page of their website is also interesting.

After spending far longer than was necessary at Kutrite, we headed over to Ecclesfield to check out the Working Men's Club, which was sealed tight, as well as a couple of other bits and pieces on the way, before heading back to Woodhouse to investigate a possible access to the church which there had been far too much daylight/people around for earlier in the evening.

Given it's location, we really struggled to light the place without alerting everyone in town to our presence. jw got some pretty decent shots in the end (see his post in this thread) but I wasn't happy with mine at all. It was just too fucking dark, and the D70 hates anything above iso200 or 30 second exposure!

I managed to get back around a week later at sunrise, and I'm really glad I did - the light was fantastic and really made the place very photogenic.

Video of a tranny...

...as promised. Not fantastic quality, but not too bad for my phone I guess.

A bridge too far...

January and February have been frustrating months derp-wise, with every possible lead proving to be sealed tight or a dead end.
I was determined to have at least some success before February was out, and after being given strict instructions to leave the house one night by Mrs K, I decided a blast up the M1 was in order to cross the big blue beast that is the Middlebrough Transporter Bridge off my list. jazzywheelz had already expressed an interest in climbing it, and with only two days notice he was able to pull some strings and join me for the trip.

I did consider cancelling, right up until the last minute, as the Manflu was really kicking my arse, but these things tend to be now or never in my experience; I'd already been stood at the foot of the bridge once, around 18 months previous and hadn't pulled it off; I didn't want to let the opportunity pass by again.

Doing my best not cough up rancid brown mucus all over everything, and with jazz no doubt holding his breath for most of the journey, I floored it up the motorway in the direction of Teesside, expecting to hit the snow that had been threatening at any moment. Wondering whether or not she would be lit up tonight we caught a glimpse of blue metal shining brightly over the distant buildings.  As it turned out, the lights actually made it a bitch to expose our shots properly up there... And by the time we'd climbed back down, the lights had been switched off so we managed to not get any shots of it lit up from the ground...

Access was relatively easy, and more or less how I'd envisaged it would be. The same can't be said for getting back off the thing; if you're not massively comfortable with heights, like me, then it's an absolute shitter.

Props to Gone for insight.

Possible video to follow, if my phone's done a half decent job...