It was still raining heavily and during the drive over it got so bad i had to pull over and stop. Visibility was zero, thunder and lightning flashed and roared in the skies above and the window wipers couldn’t cope. Even if we managed to get close enough i wasn’t about to walk across a waterlogged field in this, regardless of the fact i would be wearing waders.

We decided to pull into a KFC to wait the rain out. You could tell the loss of industry had hit Accrington’s town folk pretty hard. Every patron was at least three to four times my size, the women had more facial hair then me, their children sounded like they had worked down coal mines for years, and from the look of their teeth they must rinse with a can of coke before bed. Wait that would imply they actually brushed them, so scratch that. I don’t want to be mean but my god, there is no way you can have any excuse for this other than they just have no self respect.

After spending over an hour in the communal zoo the rain had eased up enough to leave, a brief glimpse of the sun peeked provocatively through the clouds. The Hall of Giants has two main features, a large waterfall dropping the river down into the culvert, and its exposed outfall. Both of which can be seen without stepping into the water so we parked up, waders on and headed off over the fields.

I’ve seen pictures of the waterfall before on the web and i have to say its 300 times more impressive in person. Water cascaded over the edge onto the stones below, a small mist drifting into the tunnel. As we stood atop the rumbling beast we looked once more at the river, this time it was less then three inches deep!. By now the rain had stopped and the sun was out, but there was no way enough time had passed for it to have dried up. We took a few pictures and wandered over to the outfall, a 10ft red brick monster.

At its outfall the river was a bit deeper at 1-2ft, but it was flowing calmly and didn’t really pose a problem. The tunnel ran in pretty much a straight line which in the sunshine caused the infall and outfall to flare making photography a pain in the ass. Eventually i gave up and we headed in to pay our respects to the ram.

Now this is more like the northern drains I’m familiar with. Debris everywhere, hidden pits of unknown depth, slimy rocks, se-saw bits of wood and stone and to make matters worse two paths running along the side that were just a few inches too small to walk along. The ram was making our journey difficult for it was photo shy and feared the glitzy glamour of the urban photographer.

Eventually the three who dared enter made it to its final resting place, a large collection of bones, decomposed skin and a eerie skull our reward. The ram was a victim of the river, taken over the falls edge and stranded in a side passage left to die. In its desperation to escape it had managed to climb up five steps, each roughly a meter high before finally giving up and slumping to the floor. We asked if it knew why the rivers were so calm amidst all the rain but it didn’t reply, its jaw open as if to say ‘do i look like i care?’.

Well how rude, a simple no would have sufficed. With this said we headed back outside , the fading sunlight indicated we should find a place to camp. Hmm what’s that glowing thing?, lets head to that.