Standedge Tunnels - Marsden
Having explored these tunnels numerous times over the years, it's always fun to provide a unique place to explore and practice light painting. The tunnels are over three miles in length, so it's a long slog if you want to see the other end, totaling a six-mile round trip minimum. On one of my previous visits, we headed in late at night with the plan to paddle from one end to the other on inflatable dinghies.
The canal tunnel has plenty of refuge points along with escape ladder shafts to the railway tunnels above, offering ample opportunities to bail out if needed. We must have made it around the halfway mark before we grew tired and began to feel motion sickness. It was around this time that a friend of mine, who, due to a packing mishap, was navigating with only one oar, found himself directly beneath a completely avoidable waterfall, helplessly spinning in circles, unable to escape its downpour. I couldn't help but think how this unfortunate event could have been avoided with two oars.
After this, we decided to turn back and exit at the next ladder refuge. We paddled on for another fifteen minutes or so, all of us gradually feeling more sick, and our friend who had gotten stuck under the waterfall began to get cold. We then noticed that the ever-present escape ladders to the surface were now nowhere to be seen, and unaware of when the next one would appear, we decided to disembark at the next available opportunity.
This turned out to be an empty void room with wooden planks above, and it was filthy. As we disembarked, our wet and now dangerously cold friend watched as his single oar slipped and began to float away along the gentle current. This wasn't his biggest concern, as when he landed on what looked like an escape route, he beached a bit too hard, and the unmistakable sound of air escaping from his dinghy could be heard. The boats were just about large enough for one person and their personal bags, so the logistics of accommodating another person and their equipment were problematic.
As we were deciding on our next course of action, I noticed that one of the planks above our heads was loose. With a slight nudge, the board lifted, revealing what seemed like a storage room above. We sent the skinniest member of the group up first, and with some difficulty, they wormed through and confirmed it was connected to the main parallel abandoned railway tunnels. This meant we could pack up and walk back to the cars… as long as we could all fit through the gap.
Some of us struggled more than others with this gap. A single board, which couldn't have been more than a standard thirty-centimeter ruler in width, and with gravity working against us, it took all of us to push and pull each other, maneuvering body parts through the narrow opening before we all made it out above.
There are ‘Echo finders’ dotted along the route. These send out a constant, intermittent beep, allowing people in the tunnel to follow the sound to a phone with which they can contact the outside world in case of an emergency. This beep was interrupted on our way back by the other intermittent sound of a squelching left shoe, but before long, we were back out, warming up in the car and able to laugh at what had just happened. This didn't deter me from taking a dinghy to unusual places; rather, it just made me aware that long periods of time on them will likely result in vomiting.
History
“The Standedge tunnels are four parallel tunnels passing underneath the Pennine hills at the Standedge crossing between Marsden in Kirklees, West Yorkshire and Diggle in Oldham, Greater Manchester in northern England. There are two disused railway tunnels, a live railway and the Standedge canal tunnel which is the highest and longest railway tunnel in the UK, The tunnel is 5445 yards (4,979m) in length and 643ft (196m) deep at its deepest point underground, we did a bit of of the canal tunnel a few years back on some dinghies but this visit we were just having a look at the abandoned railway tunnels. There are different sized refuge points all along the way and Four cross-chambers now act as emergency evacuation routes between the operational tunnel and the Down South single bore, Around halfway there is what's known as 'the cathedral' this is the bottom of an air shaft that sits on top of the moors but due to heavy rainfall it wasn't possible to get any snaps of this section”.
