You Never Know Who's Watching

 Mark Harvey is a clever chap and a brilliant photographer.   He has devoted years of his time to meticulously recording and documenting every structure along the 72 mile length of the Settle-Carlisle railway line.   The stunning results can be seen on his SCRCA* masterpiece online.

SCRCA

*SCRCA? I hear you cry.  Settle Carlisle Railway Conservation Area.  The longest Conservation Area in the land and perhaps the most spectacular.   The very survival of many of the S&C's structures is down to the existence, and enforcement of the SCRCA.   Maybe our water tower included.

Yesterday the weather was right for Mark Harvey to throw caution to the wind and climb to the top of Settle's Castlebergh Crag and see if he could get an almost aerial panorama of Settle station.  Here is one of the resulting images:

He would have got a fine view of the station were it not for the late summer trees in full foliage - and a certain enormous water tower.  Still, a fine view and  amazing detail of not just the station but also the houses and industrial buildings behind it.  A 'context view' in the jargon of the SCRCA, almost westwards.

Mark H is meticulous about not infringing anybody's privacy so he scans his images in detail before using them.  At first sight there are no such problems with that picture.  Is that a person on the footbridge though?  Any registration numbers readable?  Looks good.  But hang on, are we sure?  Maybe you can click on the pic and zoom-in to check.  That is what Mark H was able to do with his high resolution original image.  What he found was astonishing.

Not at all obvious at first but is that somebody's head between the roof room and the sloping roof of the tank-top but sunken wooden shed?  It was me, inside the tank, about to make my way southwards along the narrow and deep walkway inside the tank between the roof room and the eastern side of the tank.  Nothing to worry about in terms of Data Protection though.  That narrow sunken walkway was a planning requirement to protect the privacy of a neighbouring garden.  An unwelcome consequence meant that any later maintenance high up on that side of the roof room would involve climbing.  At height.

Zooming in on a slightly later image was this:

One foot on top of a near vertical ladder and the other on a narrow shelf inside the tank.  Hands free I am fixing sealant strip under the roof overhang as part of the campaign to keep flies from having access to the roof room (see previous post).  The operation is not as dangerous as it might appear, thanks to the slender but very strong horizontal continuous railing around the top of the tank.  The railing normally serves no purpose apart from creating a horizontal black line above the tank, one of the clever devices to conceal the roof room when viewed from the ground.   It was never intended as a safety fence but on this occasion (and others) it was - thanks to Settle blacksmith David Clements who did the vertical posts and to Jonathan Mounsey and his men who did the rails in between.  The posts were forged from tank bracing rods and the rails are of immensely strong tubular steel industrial electrical conduit.  Fortuitously.

I remember Restoration Man producer Melissa Mayne telling me that planning requirements and building control insistences could be a toxic mix.  How right she was.

Thanks also to Mark H for allowing me to use this set of pictures.  Bracing myself for thorough tellings-off from daughter Lorna and wife Pat.  Both far scarier than this carry-on.