yen_powell

It's not an interest you have, it's just a burning obsession that sooner or later someone will have left some loose change just lying about. This has made you the man now known across all of Spain as El-Trespassero!

This place had no guides only the speaker things you carried with you. It also had no cashier, it was all self service in the canteen, even paying in an honesty box (cash only preferred, but a self service card machine was there as well for entry/tea food etc. Years ago we used to pay for the trials practice ground across the road by putting money in a sunken box with no one to check.

So the cast of The Only Way Is Essex could all be saved in the event of a nuclear war. It's just a drunken Uber trip away for them.

It depends on what I'm thinking about.

Early 90s it was decommissioned. I think I saw the figure £550,000 somewhere. It was definitely a sealed bid auction, I remember that clearly. The name label on the side of the old PC screen is a friend of one of the group I was there with, it was bought from their employer as it was the right age and type to go on display. A few hundred people were expected to live inside, with military unit living outside to defend it.

Same as up top I reckon, they have both doors open through the day. Took about an hour and half, would have been longer if I had watched all the films, but we all saw Protect and Survive when they released it in the 80s, so I know how to wrap grandma's body in plastic and label it clearly and to wipe down my tins of food before opening them to get the fall out off them.

First of all apologies for so many blurry pictures. I deleted a few, but some, like the cardboard coffin or looking up one of the stairwells, I left in. Trying to take pictures on my particular phone with one hand meant I wobbled a bit taking some of them (the other had the guided tour doodah in it, the wand mentioned in the wall notices). The first picture of my bike is in the gravel car park which I later realised is on top of the complex itself. So, the secret nuclear bunker as it is now called, is in the Essex countryside not far from Brentwood. The land was bought off the present owner's grandfather by compulsory purchase in 1950. A local road was shut and screens raised to hide what the builders were doing. They removed a small hill and put down a few metres of gravel as a cushioning device before building the concrete bunker with carbon steel reinforcing then popped the hill back on top. They constructed the standard tacky cottage they liked to use to hide doors as one of two entrances. It's a big place. The entrance corridor is designed to make it difficult to move along whilst being shot at as well as a blast reducing measure. There were a few films running in some rooms. One comment that stuck was that when morphine ran out for the surviving population at large after a nuclear incident the police would be authorised to use firearms to put people out of their pain. This made me think of the Monty Python Bring Out Your Dead sketch where the not yet dead husband is claiming he's getting better as his wife tries to put him on the death cart. There is a huge amount of diesel stored there still (increasing in value as I type), plus large tanks of drinking water. All human waste would be stored in a giant tank until it could take no more, then pumps would push it out into the next door hollows dug in the surrounding fields and woods. It was still being maintained up until it was declared surplus to requirements and auctioned off, the same family managed to get it back. Apparently one of the generators was taken to pieces to be repaired when it was shut down and the thing is still sitting there in pieces. The final pictures show the communication aerial and air vent, plus a ropey looking tracked vehicle that was there back in 95 when myself and Strange Dave visited on our trail bikes before the visitor road in was built. It doesn't look as if any restoration work has taken place.

I reckon the Africa Twin is under priced, they go for that for the 750 models nowadays and the 650 is rarer and better put together.

The picture of The Tower with its moat full of water was a surprise, only ever seen it as lawn. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/21/the-fogs-smogs-of-old-london-x/

There's a formula for bridge height signs that errs on the safe side, so it is probably half a foot higher then that. But then some twat resurfaces the road and doesn't tell the bridge people who look after the signs that there is more or less room of course. From Chapter 4 TSM 7.4.1.  The imperial figure shown on signs to indicate the available headroom should be at least 3 inches less than the measured height to allow a safety margin. If the resulting figure is not a multiple of 3 inches, it should be rounded down to the nearest lower multiple of 3 inches. Example 1: measured height 15’-2”: Step 1 subtract 3” to create a safety margin 14’-11” Step 2 round down to nearest multiple of 3” Step 3 sign as 14’-9”. Example 2: measured height 14’-6”: Step 1 subtract 3” to create a safety margin 14’-3” Step 2 sign as 14’-3” (rounding down not required as already a multiple of 3”)

From the link above, this is currently being converted into our new Town hall, no one wants to work there it's a nightmare to get to or park around. Even the Elephant Man died rather than stay there, I bet I get his old room (when they finish getting all the asbestos out of it), or a desk outside on the old helicopter pad, I'm sure that wasn't an original feature!

Homeless people in Itchy Park, Spitalfields Drunken women fighting on a rooftop https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/19/jack-london-photographer-x/

TFL said they were going to put a double decker under this during the Olympics, I said will it fit? They assured me it would. My next question was could I watch them try please? They said I could ride on the test bus if I wanted, but I declined. No idea height of DD bus so it may have fitted. I do note that since the Olympics the bridge height sign is 6 inches lower than before. It used to say 4.6m/15'

During the Olympics many buses were on diversion. One driver who hadn't paid attention managed to take his double decker through the Blackwall Tunnel by mistake. His passengers all gave him the advice to find somewhere to turn around and go back to the north side of the Thames. Luckily he was not that silly, the southbound tunnel is newer (1969) than the Edwardian northbound tunnel and will take a double decker, the north bound won't. I reckon he had to head to Tower Bridge or Dartford to get back.