Just above Shankill (my home village) there is a disused lead works. They used to heat rocks with lead in them – and then the lead would vaporise and head up a long tunnel to a chimney. There, the lead would condense on the sides and be scraped off. Good healthy work with, no doubt, excellent pension plans.
Speaking of pension plans (I digress), in Ireland at the moment with bazillions of Euros in Debt the public is getting annoyed that Ministers are drawing pensions before they’ve actually reached the age of retirement. E.G you could do a few terms in office, quit, and then start drawing a pension for 40, 50K Euro. I could be misunderstanding something here – but seems quite wrong. Is this the same in other countries?!
Anyways – I digress..
It’s a nice walk up the hill, and at the top is the chimney. Maaike immediately decided to have a quick little boulder on it – up to the first break in the stairs.
Matt (brother) then had a go – and … interestingly / challengingly went on past the break, and then right up to the top break (quite a long way up).
There were some Scouts playing around at the bottom of the chimney, and I think they were pretty scandalised by such irresponsible adult behaviour.
I hummed and hawed – as, while I enjoy climbing, I’d rather do it with a rope! That said, it wouldn’t do to have ones elder brother show one up infront of ones parents and girlfriend now would it?
So I headed up, while visions of splatting myself just before Maaike’s sisters wedding ran through my head. It’s actually not that bad, the steps seem very very solid, the only tricky part was coming back down past the first break (which wouldn’t have been life threatening anyway). Interestingly there’s a carabiner right at the very top, so I suspect people have & do climb it illicetly.
Lots of fun – thanks Matt for being reckless ;)
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