Place: Greenwich Gasometer
Location: Greenwich Peninsula, London
Date: August 2012
This one had been in my sight for a while so when Marc proposed we give it a go, I went crazy with excitement. Thankfully I’d calm down by the time we actually did give it a go, which was good because accessing the site was far from easy, requiring a mixture of observational skills, perseverance and patience as well as a fair amount of crawling under, squeezing through and climbing over various obstacles. On top of that five fire engines zoomed past towards the millennium dome just before we started our expedition, and a couple of police cars slowly drove past or even stopped nearby forcing us to freeze in our tracks a couple of time. Being overexcited at that stage would have been counter-productive. What was required was cool composure and quiet determination.
Once inside the perimeter, we went to rest a bit on top of the bell, taking a few pictures while admiring the skeletal but majestic frame of the gasometer. Before I had a chance to catch my breath Marc was already on his way up the ladders, carrying ropes, harness and everything else he needed to abseil down from the top. Katie was next going up the ladder, and I was third. Using the ladder was an interesting change from climbing up cranes. On cranes the ladder feels very safe. It is of course enclosed right inside the crane itself, but it also has a protective frame all around. On the gasometer, the protection frame was vacant on the side of the ladder looking inwards at the gasometer. This was a little bit disconcerting, but in fact also necessary considering that the width of the ladder was about half or two/third of a crane ladder. I would never have been able to squeeze through if the protection frame had been there on all sides, particularly with my backpack on. It did feel that, most of the time, half of my body was hanging above a void, but I didn’t mind that. I kinda liked it in fact.
Reaching the top, after climbing six ladders, something striked me immediately. While I was expecting a sort of walkway around the top of the frame, even a narrow one, there was none. Nothing designed for a human being to walk around easily at all. I thought that while the gasometer was still in use there would be a need for maintenance staff to regularly walk around up there, but this was obviously not the case. It would have been possible to walk around, and I did manage one section before stopping to take pictures, but this involved holding firmly onto some metal rods as well as stepping over those same rods halfway through. It would still have been achievable, and I’ll certainly do it the next time I’m up there (certainly now that I have scaffold hooks), but since I was exploring with three other people my priority was to take pictures first.
Once at the top, I immediately set about taking pictures of the dome, by far the most photogenic building around. Its twelve support towers were beautifully lit, shining red at the top, blue in the middle and yellow below that. After a few minutes of this, I decided to look around and see if there were other interesting views to take pictures of before taking shots of the gasometer itself. However when I returned my attention to the dome a mere couple of minutes later, the support towers weren’t lit any more apart from the red tips!
It is shortly after this that I realised Marc had set up his slings, carabiners and rope and was on his way down, abseiling like a pro and at an exhilarating speed. I did try to take pictures, but when I looked at them later Marc was nowhere to be seen. Long night exposures don’t work well when someone whizzes down a gasometer like an SAS-operative on a mission. Once he was down I threw the rope down, picked up the two slings and two carabiners left behind and took them back down with me.
A fantastic explore. Thank you Marc, Winchester and Keïteï.
Location: Greenwich Peninsula, London
Date: August 2012
This one had been in my sight for a while so when Marc proposed we give it a go, I went crazy with excitement. Thankfully I’d calm down by the time we actually did give it a go, which was good because accessing the site was far from easy, requiring a mixture of observational skills, perseverance and patience as well as a fair amount of crawling under, squeezing through and climbing over various obstacles. On top of that five fire engines zoomed past towards the millennium dome just before we started our expedition, and a couple of police cars slowly drove past or even stopped nearby forcing us to freeze in our tracks a couple of time. Being overexcited at that stage would have been counter-productive. What was required was cool composure and quiet determination.
Once inside the perimeter, we went to rest a bit on top of the bell, taking a few pictures while admiring the skeletal but majestic frame of the gasometer. Before I had a chance to catch my breath Marc was already on his way up the ladders, carrying ropes, harness and everything else he needed to abseil down from the top. Katie was next going up the ladder, and I was third. Using the ladder was an interesting change from climbing up cranes. On cranes the ladder feels very safe. It is of course enclosed right inside the crane itself, but it also has a protective frame all around. On the gasometer, the protection frame was vacant on the side of the ladder looking inwards at the gasometer. This was a little bit disconcerting, but in fact also necessary considering that the width of the ladder was about half or two/third of a crane ladder. I would never have been able to squeeze through if the protection frame had been there on all sides, particularly with my backpack on. It did feel that, most of the time, half of my body was hanging above a void, but I didn’t mind that. I kinda liked it in fact.
Reaching the top, after climbing six ladders, something striked me immediately. While I was expecting a sort of walkway around the top of the frame, even a narrow one, there was none. Nothing designed for a human being to walk around easily at all. I thought that while the gasometer was still in use there would be a need for maintenance staff to regularly walk around up there, but this was obviously not the case. It would have been possible to walk around, and I did manage one section before stopping to take pictures, but this involved holding firmly onto some metal rods as well as stepping over those same rods halfway through. It would still have been achievable, and I’ll certainly do it the next time I’m up there (certainly now that I have scaffold hooks), but since I was exploring with three other people my priority was to take pictures first.
Once at the top, I immediately set about taking pictures of the dome, by far the most photogenic building around. Its twelve support towers were beautifully lit, shining red at the top, blue in the middle and yellow below that. After a few minutes of this, I decided to look around and see if there were other interesting views to take pictures of before taking shots of the gasometer itself. However when I returned my attention to the dome a mere couple of minutes later, the support towers weren’t lit any more apart from the red tips!
It is shortly after this that I realised Marc had set up his slings, carabiners and rope and was on his way down, abseiling like a pro and at an exhilarating speed. I did try to take pictures, but when I looked at them later Marc was nowhere to be seen. Long night exposures don’t work well when someone whizzes down a gasometer like an SAS-operative on a mission. Once he was down I threw the rope down, picked up the two slings and two carabiners left behind and took them back down with me.
A fantastic explore. Thank you Marc, Winchester and Keïteï.
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