Scammonden dam bell mouth - Yorkshire - june 2011

[Reddood]

Visited with Buddah and AndyJ

I've been after doing one of these for an age, as we couldnt find a report on this one, we decided to give it a go!

Scammonden dam, built in the late 60's / early 70's, it was the first and as far as i know, still the only dam in the UK to carry a motorway, so it has the duel function of supporting the highway infrastructure, and supplying water to yorkshire.

as it carries the M62 motorway over Deanhead Valley in the Pennines, the building of it was an important part of the introduction of the M62 motorway, but the building of it took 14 months longer than planned due to bad weather in the area, and the local peat bogs which made getting machines into the area hard.

The plan was to just rock up, rig it and drop in, and thats pretty much what happened, the exit at the other end wasn't quite as simple though, we had looked at it, it looked a simple walk out through some ancle deep water, this water turned out to be neck deep. so we had to make a human pyramid at the outfall to climb up the wall, to rig a rope for the other two of us.

anyway, alls well that ends well.

some pics.

[MJS]

Ace! 100%

[captain cave man]

nice pic's fellas oh how deep is the plug hole ?...did you climb back out too ?.....cheers for posting

[crippletron 3000]

[Reddood]

we used 75m of rope, allowing for the rigging i would gess, the drop is 65 - 70m, we didn't ascend out, we walked through the pipe to the outfall.

[crippletron 3000]

We used a 60M rope, with rigging left about another 8ft of slack at the bottom, the motorway embankment is about 150ft or so from when we roughly measured it, but don't quote me

[Clough]

Thats cracking mate, drove past this place loads and wondered about it now tha's knows!

[Mutilated_Pixie]

I have seen this many times on me travels to and from Manchester and thought I wonder what it's like down there and now I know lol, nice post and pics too

[myke]

nice pics and report but dont think you will get me down there

[nitestalker]

nice!!