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Hunting Morclocks in The Time Machine

August 31, 2013 | Posted in 4Gas, calcite, Cetacea Basic Coil Lanyard, chesty, clock, CSO, culvert, drain, fish, GoPro Hero, GoPro Hero2, morlocks, pike, sewer, three arches, time machine, turds, Underground, wad0rs, waders | By sYnc

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“Are fish ginger?”

“No!”
“Hmmm, that must be a turd then…”

And so it came to pass that God gave Winch and me a day off, so we climbed aboard the trusty ExplorMobile and headed out into the countryside of middle England to look for Morlocks in the Time Machine…

We never did see a Morlock in the drain but we did find Mountain Bikes, Monster energy cans, big fish (including a laid back Pike who was over 2 feet long), fanny plasters, Golden Nuggets (of the turd variety) and some nice brick porn.In the 1850’s they drained the local Holme Fen which dropped the water levels locally and in 1852 they started work on the culverts to divert Bury Brook under the town, finally finishing in 1854. At the outfall Bury Brook joins High Lode which forms part of the Middle Level Navigation which eventually joins the OldRiverNene after a mile.The main reason for the trip was the actual junction of the tunnels and the remaining underground workings of the water powered town clock. The clock is still there but in 1920 was converted to run on electricity.The main tunnel carries Bury Brook (clean-ish) water and the side tunnels are stinky CSO’s. For anyone who says otherwise then don’t believe them!

If you are planning on doing the whole culvert and reaching the outfall (approx 700m) then be a smart boy like Winch was and wear Chest Waders, lazy boy here wore Thigh Waders and suffered wad0r breach halfway through, never a good thing when you are surrounded by floaters and are over 1000 meters from dry land. I poured several gallons of shitty/pissy water out each wader when we got back to the car, much to the amusement of the bemused locals who were probably wondering why two blokes were walking down the high street in 26 degree heat dressed in black rubber ;-p

I’d like to go back when there’s a LOT more water going through, the shots would be better and all the turds will have been flushed out…

Props to Dsankt, Otter & Loops for finding this place back in 2008

The ‘Money Shot’, in fact there’s two angles here cos I can’t decide which one I like the most, the first one is neat because of the water and the second one neat because of the arches.

Outfall

Looking for Morlocks…

Bag Whore

August 2, 2013 | Posted in 5.11, bags, camera, Canon, collosus, DSLR, EOS, flipside, Gearslinger, GoPro Hero, lowe pro, Maxpedition, monsoon, rush 12, Sitka, Tripod | By sYnc

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Exploring has made me into aself confessed bag whore and I’ve been on the search for the perfect exploring bag for years and years, the thing is there isn’t really any such thing. As long as what you’ve got gets your kit where you need to go without falling apart or damaging your stuff then it doesn’t matter.What is true though are certain bags are better in certain environments, for example in tight, flooded or really muddy spaces I prefer my Sitka Gearslinger as I can spin him round and access whatever I want without taking it off or let the bag touch the ground…..quite useful if you are in four feet of water :-)Every now and then I get an itch to try something new though but invariably they are on eBay within a few days as I’ve not done my homework properly or some ‘feature’ of the bag has annoyed me and I’ve fell out of love with it. My ‘daily driver’ up until recently has been my Maxpedition Sitka Gearslinger as he can carry my Canon, various flashlights, Gas Detector, batteries, bits of climbing gear and a side mounted tripod. More importantly its f**ing Bomb Proof which I like in a bag. I’ve had it years but it’s probably not quite as big as it should be……I hate carrying big bags but should probably upgrade him to a Kodiak Gearslinger which is the exact same design just a touch larger…

The last few weeks I’ve been taking out a Lowe Pro Flipside 300 AW that was gifted to me. He’s great in some respects, light, totally customisable and padded inside so I can get my Canon, GoPro, lighting rig, flashlights etc. in plus it has a really neat tripod carrying solution….BUT….the shoulder straps feel VERY flimsy compared to the OTT build qualityoftheMaxpedition stuff and you have to take the damn thing off to access anything inside.

Lowe Pro Flipside 300 AW

The main two I keep going back to though are the Sitka Gearslinger if I’m somewhere out of sight or if I’m trying to blend in a bit the 5.11 Rush 12, he’s great as I can get the camera and tripod inside the bag so is much less conspicuous. For silly ass wet/flooded sites I take an Ortlieb heavyweight dry bag in an attempt to not kill another DSLR.

The new kid on the block is a Maxpedition Colossus which I’ve not taken out yet but like the fact I can drop the Canon/Tokina rig straight into him and access it quickly. I’m hoping it will be perfect for handheld only trips where the tripod stays at home but I reckon it will take a side mounted tripod quite easily if I needed to.

Maxpedition Collossus

Other’s that have come and gone are:

Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack – Too small

Maxpedition Monsoon Gearslinger – Nice in theory, annoying in practice.

Short & Sweet

July 8, 2013 | Posted in 1080p, chesty, culvert, GoPro Hero, GoPro Hero2, POV, sync below | By sYnc

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Been out week after week trying to trace an outfall so not done any actual exploring for a little while, have got some backlog trips to post up soon though.This damn outfall is proving elusive, have tried various techniques from wading up and down a river (waderless!!) to doing a full blown dye test and still nada.

On a separate note I took the GoPro Chesty out a few weeks ago in some very short culverts, quite pleased with the output (better than head mounted in my opinion).

This little video was shot in 1080p/Wide, might have been better on 1080/Medium as it starts to fisheye a bit in places.