Straight Line by Fiona, Yoda, Majyk
March 8th, 2009 7:59 AMPhotos by Majyk, Yoda and Fiona.
I have been wanting to do this task for ages but have been waiting for inspiration. I felt it would be hard to walk in anything like a straight line on the Island because the towns are too small to give it a really good go and the countryside is broken up into farms and fields with no right of way so you have to go around absolutely everything. I thought of Parkhurst forest, with a compass, as that's the only way to tell if you are going in a straight line in heavily wooded areas, but that didn't seem exciting enough. Besides, I want to save the forest for some future tasking.
Then my friend Becki asked me to go walk her dogs with her and I saw something I had forgotten about for years. A really, really long pipe! I used to come walking here with my grandparents and I always wanted to see where it went and climb along it but they wouldn't let me, 'cos i was quite small.
I invited Yoda because he has ninja like balance and is slim and spry(ish). The night before we did the task I met up with Majyk in a nightclub and told him what we were doing and he asked very enthusiastically if he could come along. 'Of course', was the answer.
The pipe runs along side the old railway line and is totally and utterly straight. It is also really, really long. I don't know how long it took us to get from one end to the other, but it was a good mornings work. Unfortunately we had to start real early 'cos Yoda had double booked himself and needed to be somewhere by two.
It was great fun, really scary on the high bits, scarier than I expected actually. Also, for the whole length of the thing we could hear a really wierd noise from somewhere in the woods. I don't know what it was, but it sounded exactly like lots and lots of monkeys. There deffinitely aren't any monkeys on the Isle of Wight, apart from in the zoo, and we weren't anywhere near the zoo, so it must have been a flock of unusual migratory birds or something. Don't know. But it sure as hell did sound like a load of monkeys.
More of the tale is written with the pictures. Enjoy...
21 vote(s)
Lincøln
4
SPJ
5
zer0gee
4
Philippe
4
Labyrinth Dog
3
Sean Mahan
4
evilweavil
5
V M
2
Burn Unit
5
Cookie
3
Charlie Fish
3
Ben Yamiin
4
saille is planting praxis
3
help im a bear
4
Austin Cook
2
Mr Everyday
1
Placid Dingo
4
bro lyx
5
relet 裁判長
5
rongo rongo
5
Waldo Cheerio
Favorite of:
Terms
return, balance, dangerous, memory, waterhazard13 comment(s)
I am guessing it has something to do with the steam railway that used to be there but I don't know. There was nothing either end, the pipe just dissapeared without a trace. I guess it was overground at that point because the ground was so uppy-downy and covered in streams and pools. There was a famous pipeline across the Island which was something to do with the war (second world war I think), it was called PLUTO and went across, mostly under, the whole Island and under the ocean (PLUTO stands for Pipeline Under The Ocean). I don't think, however, that this was part of it.
I will see what I can find out for you, Mr Cheerio.
x
How about a geo-tag?
Can we see it from space using the Googlemachine?
I think it's somewhere around this area:
Isle of Wight, UK
Link: Google Maps
I think I've seen this pipe before, but can't remember exactly where.
Its in among trees though so probably not visible. Don't know.
I just scoured that map looking for a trace of pipe, and couldn't find it. I was looking for that creek that it crosses seeing as to how there was plenty of blue sky above it, but couldn't even find that. Well, I found a creek in there, but it was likely not that creek. I really wanna see that pipe from space more now.
I have 2 things to say:
1: I AM THE PIPE NINJA!! i can conquer the length of any pipe!!
2: the pluto pipe pops out on the beach next to fishbourne along woodside beach.
Oh, wow, I think you guys should be getting the fleur on this one. I loved the treadmill, but vertigo loaded tasking is even better in my book.
M's legs went wobbly from just reading the description.
Not quite as glamorous as I thought. Asked one of my Grandparents, who seems to know everything about the Island, and he said it was an old sewage pipe. Pretty ancient but probably still in use. Oh well, it was still a good adventure.
Apparantly there were monkeys nearby, I have it on good authority. Don't know why though.
I love the straightness of the line you walked on! And also the obstacles that you had to cross. That pipe-walk was great! I would have loved to do it myself :) Can you guess at the length of the pipe? Or how long it took you to "cross" it?
This is a perfect straight line adventure.
Awesome. Creative. But don't leave me hanging, what was at either end?! Why does this exist? Who made such an exacting structure, capable of supporting the weight of three adults, in a perfectly straight line across the Isle of Wight?!