Stumbled upon this brilliant place in Cockermouth today..
http://www.jbbanks.co.uk
Utterly fascinating. Smells of my dad’s garage…

I’ve been the BigPit a few times – first time was almost by mistake, we were driving around aimlessly and saw a sign.

Wasn’t expecting much but it’s fascinating – real retired miners, real mining helmets and lights, real mine (admittedly a very clean and tidy one) and lots of history from the real bad old days of children and ponies working down the pits and men and women knocking it out with picks and shovels for nearly worthless tokens to spend in Company Store, through the strikes and up to the modern day. There’s a lot of real hatred towards Westminster even now, and a lot of it is justified – it’s not totally balanced, but you can understand where it comes from when you know the history.

https://museum.wales/bigpit/

Just up the road that one P-Jay.
Ironworks nearby too is another visti worth it.
Then over to the Whistle Inn by Garn Lakes.
Walk up the hill from above Big Pit along the old metalled road and there is a mine they just walked away from.
Wellies, tools, etc all on the floor.
Wrecked and looted now but plenty still there with the quarry just to the right of it with a massive wheel abandoned in it.
Look on Google maps for the Big Pit, then the wash pond above it – you can see the mine and the quarry.
Theres another the other side of the Varteg that takes a walk to get too but its pristine.
Literally like they went home yesterday – the mine shaft still accessible – not that you’d want to risk walking into the water that now fills it though….

Worked in a large steelworks now closed and sold to china, 4 x 100 tones capacity electric furnaces, 3 huge electrodes size of tree trunks 7 foot long 18 inch diameter slowly lowered through roof of a huge crucible, full of scrap metal, then power switched on, the noise, the heat, the sparks, the energy was fantastic, then a while latter came the cast, molten hot steel at 1400 degrees poured from 40 foot up into a huge laddle suported by a crane and then transported down the track and decanted into huge ingot moulds. More heat sparks and dust.

When teaching in France, I took my school trip over to the Big Pit. Eyes were opened. A very, very good thing.

For me, the real surprises were in three places that I felt had a memory. Call it a ghost, call it what you will, but both places felt like there was a memory alive in them.
1 – Greenham Common. I could swear I felt the wind blow and the earth rumble as a bomber took off down the long unused runway.
2 – Red Square. As above. On a quiet, midwinter night, I stood in the middle of it and it almost felt as if the cobbles were rattling as the ICBMs thundered across in a parade.
3 – El Djem. The sun was blistering, almost blinding with heat. Shimmers across the sand in the middle of the amphitheatre. Again, I could feel the living memory around me.

Three amazing places in their own way.

The other one that was amazing was a trip to the Boeing factory at Everett. I was a guest of Boeing’s head of global security at the time (A client of mine) and we drove around in his little golf cart. A more huge building you cannot possibly fathom. 747s, 777s and 787s all line up. Inside. Amazing.

Nuneaton

Arlington Court and National Truse Carriage Museum

Never thought I would find Carriage’s interesting but found it a really interesting place to visit and look at the carriages. They have the Speakers State Coach there and it is quite something up close, or as close as you can get as its in a climate controlled room.

El Djem. The sun was blistering, almost blinding with heat. Shimmers across the sand in the middle of the amphitheatre. Again, I could feel the living memory around me.

Went there as a kid – was pretty amazing. We had the run of the place pretty much as (we found out later that day) there was a pretty major national riot kicking off. So slightly more memorable than the amphiteatre was the train back to our hotel passing through a town square filled with rioting protestors and small arms fire.

The underneath of Spaghetti Junction is pretty impressive – its well known as a road intersection but underneath that you’ve got a river and canal and a railway all intersecting and crossing over and under each other with curving lines of pillars running in every direction – and bone dry. Your outdoors but on ground that hasn’t been rained on for decades. I spent every waking hour there for about a fortnight in 1993

[/url]Spaghetti Junction 1/08 (br09) by Ted and Jen, on Flickr[/img]

A more huge building you cannot possibly fathom. 747s, 777s and 787s all line up. Inside. Amazing.

Agreed! IIRC it was (may still be) the largest building in the world. Even the ‘normal’ tourist tour was fantastic. Speaking as a mild plane geek, possibly not one if you really aren’t interested in aviation!

Even the ‘normal’ tourist tour was fantastic

I had gone expecting to be on that, but I was taken on an All Access tour. I suppose being head of security grants you some leeway! Walked around inside unfinished 747s, 777s and the as then still to be released 787. I was awestruck. I still am. Sadly, I was also told to leave my phone in reception!

My dad lived in Germany for a few years and when visiting him once we travelled up to Fallingbostel and then visited Belsen.

It felt quite odd walking around it and it was uncannily quiet.

I did a shoot once in forgemasters in Sheffield, absolutely mesmerising, watched them pulling metal the size of huge tree trunks out of forges and then pressing them in a massive press. It was like something out a steampunk graphic novel.
[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CMbERykAYKM[/video]

Also spent a while in a big anechoic chamber on my own at the building research establishment. Very odd experience.

Port Talbot steel works when they are pouring is an eye-opener. The Hunterian Museum was fascinating. Gaping Gill and various other caves and potholes. Icelandic interior. Lesotho.

Internal Fire, the museum of the diesel engine. Not even cool diesel engines, like ships or cars, they’re all about the static industrial unit. Should not be interesting in any way. My favourite things were the massive generator that they’d bought on ebay while pissed, and the merlin engine stuffed in the corner like “Oh that thing? I dunno, out of an aeroplane or some such boring bullshit”

https://www.internalfire.com/

This is actually at my work but my mind was fairly blown when I first went in here:

The biggest indoor pitch in europe- I’ve been in bigger spaces but it just feels ridiculous, the idea of playing international rugby in a gym doesn’t make any sense

Williamson tunnels in Liverpool. Just bonkers.

@teamhurtmore

NUNEATON? Please enlighten me

Northwind.

I know where you work.

It’s not very secret 😆

Even so.. added to the portfolio.

I work there too

Are you Adebayo Adeloye?

Dervaza gas crater in Turkmenistan. Site of a old Soviet gas drilling whooopsie. It’s basically a massive crater on fire in the desert and up close it’s mental.

From a work perspective loads of bits of Sellafield, the original Reprocessing building was strange and huge, worked in the High Level Waste plants for a bit and got a tour inside the new research building into all the highly active stuff before it was commissioned – once in use nobody is going back in there for a very very long time.

Are you Adebayo Adeloye?

Correct industry.

Are you bald?

No. Are you Ahmed Suwaed?

(can’t take too long to go through the alphabet can it?)

I went to CERN in about 1994/5 on a school physics trip.

These vast chambers that would swallow houses to measure things smaller than electrons were bizarre. The physics was way beyond most of us at 18 years old and I fell asleep in the opening talk due to the 5am start for the airport. Possibly didn’t help. 😆

Devils Porridge Museum

Fascinating place about an important part of WW1 that I never knew existed – well worth checking out on your next trip that way for a ride.

Run by a delightful group of enthusiastic amateurs as well.

Auschwitz the absolute size of the place And what happened there

Also the fact it had a gift shop,selling plastic flowers

Churchill Falls underground hydro electric station in Labrador.

Snow on top, awesomely large halls, turbines and pipes deep below

Following on from CFH’s strange senses, I was in central Africa, in a convoy of three LRs, late one afternoon. We stopped at a roadside bar in an otherwise empty plain. The rest went for a beer. Being new I climbed onto a LR roof to watch the sun go down. It was quiet, and empty, and verystill with the red sunlight. The sun sets quickly in the tropics.

And I had a strange sense of the immense age of the landscape, like I’ve never known before or since.

Madagascar

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Northwind – Member
No. Are you Ahmed Suwaed?

(can’t take too long to go through the alphabet can it?)

I’d best tell you know it’s not for the university I work.

The Black Arrow launch site in Woomera, Australia. Miles and miles of nothing and then suddenly these two massive rocket launch platforms abandoned to the desert and the snakes. What might have been had the politics been different.

joshvegas – Member

I’d best tell you know it’s not for the university I work.

With a sentence like that, I should hope not!

Too many to mention, but being on top of the Armadillo in Glasgow at night was pretty special.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/7zymrk]Armadillo 4[/url] by Ben Cooper, on Flickr

I took my Mrs up the Oxo Tower once, which was a real surprise and quite unexpected. reviews here

Northwind – Member
joshvegas – Member
I’d best tell you know it’s not for the university I work.

With a sentence like that, I should hope not!

POSTED 11 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

Is nit ma ritten wot got me ma Joan it woz ma maffs

Surprising places:

1) Farnborough. Town is a bit rubbish, as expected, but the riding is great and extensive.

2) Swindon. Town is not as bad as its reputation would suggest, and the riding is bloody brilliant. Had a great time.

Worked in the new NATS building in Prestwick. Control floor was the size of a football pitch, weirdest bit was being able to walk about under the elevated computer flooring then being told once complete the space would be full of cabling!
Driving through the service tunnel into Edinburgh Castle and being inside the Emley Moor TV transmitter, both very James Bond-esque in there look.

For me, the real surprises were in three places that I felt had a memory. Call it a ghost, call it what you will

My dad lived in Germany for a few years and when visiting him once we travelled up to Fallingbostel and then visited Belsen

My sister used to live in Fallingbostel and a visit to Bergen-Belsen had a profound effect on me …

On a more uplifting note, a visit to the Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick is a must!! 🙂