India Mill chimney stands now as a lone memorial to King Cotton
Home to Peregrine Falcons and fantastic brickwork, the chimney now tops out at 85M (279ft).
This chimney needs no introductions from me - Just watch a legend explain this iconic structure HERE
Rewind nearly 2 years and myself and Stepping Lightly stood at the foot of this beast
"One day we will stand on top of that" ... Hmm
Having looked at many pictures including the iconic black & white shot of the 'old chaps' which eludes me for the time being, a waiting game it was.
We knew an inspection was probably imminent and after a chance conversation I overheard ladders were in place.
No fucking about here, we had a small window of opportunity, SL was out of the picture so myself & Tweedy decided to hit it up, we left a message and made our ascent.
This was no mean feat, a 9M climb up the base, followed by a further 13M up the pitched roof to the ladders whilst lit up like an x-mas tree and surrounded by dome camearas was indeed lulz.
(shouts to everyone involved, you know who you are)
Without further a-do I shot up the ladders without a care in the world until I reached the 30M mark and looked back down :D
It felt like the whole of Darwen was watching us, as the moon was strong and the sky was light.
I carried on up to the first ledge (approx 60M) from ground level and waited for my mate, stopping for a few pics before carrying on.
As I hit the first overhang, suddenly the rope started to stretch.. WTF? I couldn't pass the deviation between the connecting ladders so literally had to un-clip and free climb back down a good 40ft+ to the ledge below!
As I neared my mate, he told me that someone else was on the rope - Stepping Lightly no less, and within no time he joined us on the ledge.
There was now a genuine buzz as we carried on up the ladders one-by-one towards the summit, SL naturally shooting off into the night sky.
As I approached the final overhang (around 80M) my gear got caught around the fixings, I couldn't pull myself over or even move back down, this was some scary shit, but I had no choice but to man-up and persevere (Free climbing that overhang was prob the scariest thing I've ever done)!
I soon got my shit together and made it onto the final ladder, a quick 5M climb and I joined SL, followed by my mate on the top of the chimney with the biggest grins ever
Plan B - Get a few pics and get the fuck down...
'We made it'
India Mill
Darwen
And finally our ladder awaits
The sun was rising, I hadn't slept, full of mixed emotions we made it back down safely, bitten to death by midges for a quick ppl shot we packed up and f00ked off
Massive Shouts to Stepping lightly, Tweedy & the rest of the crew who made it up here ;)
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.