[misterjk]

I had one of those rare Saturdays where I had very little to do, so the day before I had organised with anclove that we would/should get up to something. The Saturday was even rarer for the fact that I had access to four wheels rather than two, and so we were able to plan something further afield. I got to anclove's house and we thought about what we could do, and he mentioned to me that he had seen a big seminary up near Wigan on Lawrence's website (http://nerdish.co.uk). 'Fair enough', I thought, and off we got in the car!

After what seemed like a century in the slowest, crappest car in the world we finally found the place. After a bit of a trek through some woods I got my first glimpse of St. Joseph's Seminary, and Christ was it worth it! The seminary itself was the last junior seminary in the North, in the sense that boys from the age of 11 upwards were sent to eventually become priests. It closed its doors finally in 1987; in the 70s it become unviable to keep running as a seminary; parts of it had already been converted into a regular college as the decline in interest in the vocation became more and more apparent.

After about an hour dodging the security and nearly being busted by a van, crawling into as many holes as we could and having what now seems like complete disregard for the CCTV system we were in. This is one huge site, and we barely covered more than half of it before we decided that we had pushed our luck for too long and tried to find a different exit, to no avail (although this did mean we had an interesting walk through the basement, which came complete with wine cellar containing some VERY old sherry and port).

Enough of the waffling, onto some pictures! Please bear in mind that this was my first explore with the new D40, and I got a bit pissed off with my tripod towards the end, as it seemed to have developed a mind of its own.









































An absolutely brilliant day, in one of the most beautiful explores I've ever done or seen. Next time I'll have a non-sentient tripod and a bit more time, DEFINITELY one on the returns list!

Jay