Arriving after listening to far more than I could ever want to know about every explorer and ex-boyfriend from Bekah on the long long bus ride from London, I arrived in the heart of Manchester exhausted. However, as we bumped into the locals, I realised the night was indeed young. Bekah & I met some of the local explorers, including familiar faces Max Fishbrain and Alex Residues from London.

We dumped our bags in Fishbrain's car, and then wandered around the centre a bit, before separating up into smaller groups. Fishbrain lead me, Residues, Angelina and Bekah to a bit of a University being built which had a crane and scaff up around the site. Not the highest of buildings, but one that's high-ish for this city.
After carefully checking the angles on the small cctv cameras and potential human problems, we hopped into the site.

My suspicions about Bekah's exploreworthyness were confirmed as she struggled to get over a simple wire mesh fence. My face turned to horror when they casually produced a huge yellow metal door jammer! I was getting genuinely worried, as I didn't want to see the inside of a Mancunian cell, especially for a crappy building site. We were then confronted by a moveable section of a solid fence, that was particularly stubborn, so instead of using Bekah's tool, we used a better non-criminal solution, namely a small young lady in the shape of Kaitie. She squeezed under the fence as we pulled it up as high as we could. Once under, she removed the obstructions, and we leapt up the site.

While skulking around the 3rd floor, looking for another set of steps, Fishbrain received a text informing him that two fellow London explorers had become the first explorers to conquer the highest construction site in Manchester, The Student Castle Tower. And so he felt obliged to go and join them to save Manchester's face! Kaitie joined him, taking Bekah with them, much to Residues and my relief. Residues and I found a way up, in the shape of some very long ladders in a lift shaft. At the top, we were high, high for the North anyway. The crane sat next to some windows with lights on, that we couldn't 100% tell whether they were occupied, but they had hi-vis jackets sat on the backs of chairs. So we opted to skip it. This was the roof, with a crane in the centre. It's blue...

Looking across to the impressive pointy skyline of Manchester. The tall building with a crane on the side in the centre of the picture was the structure that Fishbrain and Co were hurrying off to climb.

The following night we were having a party for one of the local explorers, and the venue was the Palace hotel clock tower. Here in the centre of the picture is said tower, surrounded by the buildings of downtown Manchester.

Looking out to the suburbs, some sort of mini St' Louis Arch in the centre.

After taking a couple of shots, we quickly grew bored and headed back down. An internal shot of the central atrium area.

Residues and I headed off to the Student Castle Tower, stopping off for some awful 24hr pizza on the way. As we got close to the site, we bumped into another group of explorers, loitering around suspiciously. Namely Marta, GE050 and Russian Chap. GE050 is fresh from being busted climbing the Manchester Eye. I'd known Russian Chap for a while and heard many a story about him, so was good to finally meet. Not much later, a few bodies could be seen dropping down from the mass of scaffold from the Student Castle Tower and ran up to us. Elated that they'd crack a pretty tough building. We headed off back to Fishbrain's place and slept healthily in one of his many spare rooms.
We headed off to a Mill in the afternoon, but in the evening it was the main reason for coming down, a party. Who doesn't like a party? It was to be held in the clock tower of a live hotel in the city. Live building infiltration doesn't really happen in London but is standard practice up here. So it was interesting to walk into the Hotel with hardly any of the staff batting an eyelid. We climbed the nicest stairs I've ever climbed on an explore.

Which was followed by the step-laden marvel that is the spiral staircase up to the roof. A shadowy pipe ninja glimpsed briefly, before doing something ninja-worthy, probably involving a pipe for no known reason.

The stairs ran out at the open section of the tower, just above the red glowing letters of the hotel's name. Here, later on, many locals and visitors would sit on the edge, chatting, drinking and smoking various substances., legal and otherwise. A ladder went up further but led to a locked section at the very top.

Inside the clock room, where people fled when I showed up, sniff.

With time passing away, it was necessary for myself, Fishbrain and Residues to slip away and nip to a neighbouring city for Metro hijinks. Thanks to those that organised it, and thanks to NCKapita for letting me crash at his for a few hours at silly O' Clock, top man! And thanks to the birthday boy, hope it was a good one!