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Pyestock Diaries

The corridor travelled north-south, easily a good candidate for the Cell 3/Cell 4 connecting tunnel. Light steamed in from a glass door which opened out into a courtyard outside the science lab, but the main parts of the passageway were shrouded in darkness. It was here that I made my crucial mistake: I got lazy. I was unwilling to open my rucksack, take out my jacket, lunch, water, batteries and fish out my torch. So I inched forward into the darkness, explaining to Alex that there must be a tunnel somewhere along here. And whilst doing this, I took the first step over a flight of concrete stairs.

My foot reached nothing and I pitched forward. As I did so my reaction was to jolt backwards and so I lost my other footing. I then fell sideways onto the top of the concrete steps, but continued to try to hold my camera upright with little effect, as I slammed it into the wall taking the skin off my knuckles. I then slid down several steps into the darkness whilst trying to maintain a hold of my camera and stop myself simultaneously.

"Are you OK?" Alex called out from the gloom.

"Ah fuck". I sat upright, laid down the camera and took off my rucksack. I did what I should’ve done in the first place and dug out my torch. Instantly the corridor was filled with light and we both clearly saw the steps leading down into the subterranean depths below. I’d fallen a quarter of the way down, grazing my elbow and knuckles. Fortunately my camera was OK, albeit now looking more battled, but otherwise worked fine. I’d got away with it.

After picking myself up we ventured into the tunnel itself. After a concrete lined dog leg we found ourselves in the basement of Cell 4 and so were able to tick off another Pyestock feature. In my hurry to get into Cell 4 (and put the embarrassing stair incident behind me) I didn’t actually get around to exploring the tunnel properly and/or photograph it and I had to make a mental note to return at another date.