I was out for the day with the family (not exploring - just keeping the kids happy) and we went to Spofforth Castle near Harrogate. Nice old pile of bricks as you'd imagine, more of a fortified house than a castle really. The thing is it's built in to the hillside so it's sort of underground a bit which the kids loved.
The "castle" is owned by English Heritage but is free to go in to. Their website is so rammed full of info about it it will take aeons to read it all, but I'll post it here in its entirety anyway: "The ruined hall and chamber of a fortified manor house of the powerful Percy family, dating mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries. Its undercroft is cut into a rocky outcrop." I hope you managed to get through all that.
Anyways, we wandered in to the back garden and there was a hole in the ground. The fence has been well trodden down so me and my lad had a nosey. I'm not in to drains really, but then again I wasn't in to urbex this time last year! so we went in for a closer look.
It's a steep climb down about 15ft through sticky mud cos it had been raining a lot. At the bottom is the exit of a twin tunnel, a 15ft gap, then a wider arched bridge. Strange they didn't keep the tunnel going another 15 ft, or build the bridge closer, but anyways.... The tunnels run under the railway embankment (Harrogate/Tadcaster line), and built in the same stone as the viaduct so I'd hazard a guess they were built at the same time.
Now I had no equipment at all (just a camphone again!) and the water is about shin deep so I couldn't go in to the right hand side tunnel. However, the left hand side tunnel was just 3" deep in sticky liquid mud. We had a look inside and began to walk through the 100yd (complete guess in the pitch black) but laddo got frightened in case there were dragons in there* so we had to turn back.
Not the most interesting of reports I know, but I'm really posting this because I suddenly "get" draining. I always thought you lot were nuts, but now it's snapped with me, and this is my eureka moment so I wanted to save it for posterity.
*he's only 3
The "castle" is owned by English Heritage but is free to go in to. Their website is so rammed full of info about it it will take aeons to read it all, but I'll post it here in its entirety anyway: "The ruined hall and chamber of a fortified manor house of the powerful Percy family, dating mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries. Its undercroft is cut into a rocky outcrop." I hope you managed to get through all that.
Anyways, we wandered in to the back garden and there was a hole in the ground. The fence has been well trodden down so me and my lad had a nosey. I'm not in to drains really, but then again I wasn't in to urbex this time last year! so we went in for a closer look.
It's a steep climb down about 15ft through sticky mud cos it had been raining a lot. At the bottom is the exit of a twin tunnel, a 15ft gap, then a wider arched bridge. Strange they didn't keep the tunnel going another 15 ft, or build the bridge closer, but anyways.... The tunnels run under the railway embankment (Harrogate/Tadcaster line), and built in the same stone as the viaduct so I'd hazard a guess they were built at the same time.
Now I had no equipment at all (just a camphone again!) and the water is about shin deep so I couldn't go in to the right hand side tunnel. However, the left hand side tunnel was just 3" deep in sticky liquid mud. We had a look inside and began to walk through the 100yd (complete guess in the pitch black) but laddo got frightened in case there were dragons in there* so we had to turn back.
Not the most interesting of reports I know, but I'm really posting this because I suddenly "get" draining. I always thought you lot were nuts, but now it's snapped with me, and this is my eureka moment so I wanted to save it for posterity.
*he's only 3
