“Have you had the laser safety briefing?” a man in a hi-vis vest asks me. Having arrived late and flustered, I’m certain I’ve misheard, so I ask him to repeat the question. “The laser safety briefing,” he says, the words clear as day. “Follow me.”
We walk across a concrete floor into an office, where he hands me a document in a plastic sleeve. Immediately, my eyes are drawn to the blood red warning symbols, and a set of very important instructions; the laser I will come across today is a ‘level four’, and I absolutely must not look at it without tinted, wraparound glasses, a pair of which has just been thrust into my hands.
I’ve come to the Catesby Tunnel, a 2.7km-long stretch of abandoned railway buried beneath the Northamptonshire countryside in England’s Midlands. Built in 1897, the tunnel was cast aside in the 1960s, and now hasn’t seen a train in almost 60 years. Its entrance today is a boxy, metal warehouse, accessible by two roller shutter doors that make the state-of-the-art aero testing facility inside look like the back of a Sainsbury’s supermarket.
Grasping my safety glasses, I’m led to another office, this time by Ben Thompson, who works here at the tunnel. Sensing my impatience to see inside, Thompson offers me a peek at the CCTV footage, pointing at a small black-and-white tile of Bigham’s silhouette moving in the shadows. It’s a spooky image, made even more so by the mention of a bat colony that lives at the far end of the tunnel. Sightings, I’m told, are rare. Of the 10 people who have ever worked here, only two reckon they’ve seen a bat.
The safety briefing continues. Thompson hands me a hi-vis jacket of my own, and deals me a few more warnings; the tunnel will be dark, damp and cold – it’s kept at a constant 10.5°C – and I am not to wander off by myself once I go in. I nod along like a schoolboy nervous of being told off. A small van then arrives to take me through the portal. I clamber into the front seat, inhale deeply through my nose, and we roll slowly into the darkness.
(Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool / George Marshall)
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