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...
01 The beginning.jpg
The obligatory portrait shot...
02 Showing them the high bit.jpg
Wanted to show them the highest bit before we started, so they knew what they were getting into.
03 The start of the pipe.jpg
The beginning...
04 First wobble.jpg
Little bit of a wobble, but nothing serious.
06 What is she doing with that tree.jpg
Nice tree.
07 Getting swampy.jpg
Starting to get a bit wet down there.
08 With many obstacles.jpg
Many obstacles to climb through whilst passing over the swamp of doom.
09 Not a time for loose shoe laces.jpg
A brief pause for essential personal maintenance.
10 Obstructions.jpg
Quite a lot of obstructions...
11 Ground just starting to drop away.jpg
The pipe starts to get a little bit higher. No worries yet though.
12 Show off.jpg
Just showing off.
13 A little bit higher.jpg
Getting a bit higher. Still okay though.
14 Higher than it looks.jpg
This is the high bit, but you can't really tell from this picture.
15 Shadows show how high we are.jpg
If you look at the shadows you can see we are quite high. The pipe feels a lot less wide suddenly even though really it's just the same.
16 Legs wobbly now.jpg
My legs felt really wobbly by now. It was harder than I thought it would be.
17 Scooching past annoying obstacle.jpg
Had to straddle for this bit. There was an irritating bush in the way. I found the transition from standing to straddling almost impossible because my body was determined I was going to fall off, even though the same manouvre would have been really easy ten foot lower down.
18 Ooh there's a knobbly bit.jpg
Majyk is getting over a knobbly bit. When we were close to ground level we stepped over these without thinking about it. Suddenly they are an obstacle!
19 Whew, something to hold onto.jpg
Yoda has made it to safety. I am going to break every damn one of these twigs to get them out of my way. After five minutes of that I gave up and just squeezed past them. It's harder than it looks, honest.
20 Time for a roll-up.jpg
Majyk stops for a cigarette break. I'm still struggling across. Damn twigs.
21 But I'm still trying to get across the river.jpg
Water not deep enough to create a soft landing. Plus the fact it was icy and frosty just a couple of hours ago so probably rather cold too.
22 Bit closer to the ground now.jpg
Whew, made it. We are a bit closer to the ground now.
23 More obstacles.jpg
Lots more obstacles. Still a long way to go. A bit of tree-limbo-ing.
24 This thing goes on forever.jpg
This is a reaaaaally long pipe.
25 This thing really goes on forever.jpg
More obstacles.
26 So easy when it's low.jpg
See, now I can do all sorts of balancing because we are back at ground level, even though the pipe is exactly the same. Fear does wierd things to your body.
27 The end of the line.jpg
The end of the pipe. Wow, that was a long pipe. I always wanted to walk all the way along it when I was a kid but I had forgotten about it, not been there for about ten years, untill a friend took me dog-walking the other day. Woot.
28 Hooray.jpg
We made it, hooray!
29 We conquered it.jpg
Go team us.
30 Then we went for a play.jpg
Then, when we were done, we back tracked so we could have a little play.
31 Retraced our steps.jpg
Clambering and joy quickly followed.
32 For a bit of an adventure.jpg
See, it is quite tall.
33 Found some tunnels.jpg
These tunnels looked fun too.
34 Yoda got a bit stuck.jpg
Yoda got a bit stuck somehow trying to climb down. There was a bit of yelping and leg wiggling.
35 Not sure what they're doing.jpg
It's not quite clear what's going on here. I think Yoda is showing off his bottom again. Majyk wouldn't let me out of the tunnel, he kept poking me with a big stick.
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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?!