Loch Thom Documentary

In the hills high above the town of Greenock, in Scotland, there lies a body of water that played a vital role in the town’s history. Today, it supplies the town and surrounding area with drinking water, but in the past, it was the powerhouse of the local industrial revolution. Loch Thom is not a natural loch, it is, in fact, man-made.

Towards the end of the 18th century, Greenock was a rapidly growing town, and because of the increase in industry, there was also increasing demand for water power. James Watt was asked about the possibility of creating a new reservoir to improve the availability of water. The area in question was a depression in the landscape that already contained a small body of water. James Watt deemed this proposal impractical due to the route the aqueduct would need to take as it traversed the hillside towards town.

The same proposal was put to Robert Thom, a hydraulic engineer from the Isle of Bute. He accepted the proposal and constructed what would later become known as the Greenock Waterworks.

The project involved the creation of a large reservoir known as the Great Reservoir, its compensation dam and an aqueduct to channel the water towards the town. This aqueduct would become known as the Greenock Cut. The project was completed in 1827.

The Great Reservoir was created by damming off an existing waterway known as the Shaws Water. During a period of very low water, the banks of the former Shaws water became visible.

There is a belief that the Shaws Water was named after the Shaw family who were local landowners. It is more likely that the name was derived from a local farm known as Shaws. Its remains are still evident on the north bank of the Loch. There are also other farms and their remains dotted around the landscape.

Today the reservoir is used to supply the town of Greenock and the surrounding area with drinking water. In the 1970s a tunnel was blasted through the hillside to a new water treatment plant. Loch Thom stands as a lasting testament to what can be done when engineers set out to solve a problem. What started off as an idea… is now a local landmark.

Virtual ROP Post

This is without a doubt the most advanced video project we have attempted to date. Our goal was to create an animated video showing what an ROC post was, what it would have looked like and how one would have operated.

ROC Posts were small underground bunkers that were built all across the UK during the Cold War period. They were designed to act as monitoring posts. In the event of a nuclear attack on the country. Each post would have been able to provide local data on the direction and altitude of the explosion, as well as fall out as it occurred. This data would have been forwarded to each post’s area command and then to the central command. The combined data could then be used to determine the severity of the attack and help with planning across the country.

In theory, each post that detected the blast would be able to report its heading. At command, they would be able to use this data to plot the exact location of the blast on a map. If you can imagine several posts reporting a compass heading towards the blast. If each of these posts is at a known location, all you need to do is draw a line on the heading of the post reported. Then at the point where the lines crossed, this will be the location of the explosion. The area where the nuclear explosion occurred is referred to as ‘ground zero’.

The device that recorded the direction towards the explosion was called the ‘ground zero indicator’. It not only recorded the direction but also the altitude. The GZI worked a lot like a pinhole camera. It was a round object with photo-sensitive paper held inside. It has 4 holes facing north, south, east and west. If there were an explosion, the light would be able to pass through one of the holes and expose the paper held within. The exposure mark on the paper would align with a compass heading printed on the paper. It would also show the height to determine if this was an air-burst or ground-burst weapon.

Each post also had a device called a ‘fixed survey meter’ that recorded radiation levels at the surface. This was achieved by passing a probe up through a metal tube to the surface. The tube was generally capped off with a metal plate, but when in use, the cap would be removed and replaced with a dome. The dome allowed the probe to measure radiation at the surface whilst still sealing the bunker from the outside.

Another device that would have been used in an ROC post was the ‘bomb power indicator’. This measured the pressure wave generated by the explosion. It used a mechanical pressure meter with a pipe going to the surface. As pressure was forced down the pipe, the needle would move.

We have tried to show each of the main devices in detail, although this means our ‘Virtual ROC Post’ is not entirely historically accurate. Some of the items we have added to our post are not period-specific. What we have done is try and use the most commonly seen items and use them within our video. There are a lot of videos online of people exploring abandoned ROC posts and we want to try and explain the most commonly Present items. An example would be the TeleTalk device. This item would not have been used in 1979. (This is the date on our diary). This is however, the most common communications device seen within ROC posts.

All the animation and modelling within this video were done using ‘Blender’. Blender is a piece of software released as open-source. Once all our clips were made we used Kdenlive to create the final video. Kdenlive is our NLA (Non-Linear Editor) of choice. It is also released as a piece of open-source software.

Saving a bee with sweet sugary water.

From time to time, you will come across a bee within your house or outdoors and at first glance, it may appear to be dead. If you gently move the bee, it may quickly “wake up” and fly away, or it may display small movements and a laboured attempt at walking. In the latter case, you can attempt to revitalise the bee using a mixture of sugar and water.

You can make up a small amount of a 1 part sugar and 10 parts water mixture within a suitable container or bowl. Gently introduce the bee to the container and encourage it towards the sugary mixture. It will soon begin to feed on the sweet water.

Gradually, the bee will recover its energy and fly away. It may even hang around for a while to get more of the sugary-sweet mixture.

Some people recommend using honey instead of sugar, but some reading I have done suggests this may not be a good idea. The honey you feed the bee will have been produced by a different colony and this may introduce foreign infections to the bees. Bees only eat honey that is produced by the colony they are part of.

How to “Urbex”

In this video, we take a quick look at how we explore. Mainly focusing on the research aspect of urban exploration. Urbex is not just about exploring, it’s about finding and researching new locations to explore.

This is not designed to be a definitive guide to urban exploring. It’s simply a look at our techniques and methods. We welcome any comments or suggestions on other ideas you have.

Greenock dock cranes blown up.

This week’s video is not an exploration. It is the controlled demolition of three dockside cranes in Greenock, Scotland. This was filmed back in 2017.

The cranes were used for shipbuilding and repair at the Inchgreen Dry Docks in the town of Greenock, Scotland. The cranes were all built during the 1970s, but due to the downturn in the industry, they fell into disuse. The cranes had not been used in over a decade when they were finally destroyed. The cranes were blown up and fell into the yard, where they were later cut up and scrapped.