This was it one of the top three site you will see on this entire website!. Probally number one in my opinion. Located in the north of Scotland in Invergordon. The size 4 explorer class oil drilling rig named "Transocean Explorer".

The port of Invergordon is in charge of refurbishing or scrapping oil rigs when they are brought in from various parts of the world. So at any one time there can be up to 5 rigs in the firth awaiting their fate. The one we chose was about a mile out into the water.

I was staying in scotland as a part of a family holiday and had been meeting up with Lost to do a couple of explorer on a few of the days. When it occured to me why not try the rigs?. We had previously secured a boat so we were good to go. A early 5am start saw us rowing out to the rig during the sunrise which was fantastic!. As we were floating towards it with the current rowing wasnt too hard but we knew coming back was going to be tough. On the way several seals or otters cant remember which came to see what we were doing, popping their heads up every now and then.

As we got closed the size of the rig became apparant. And before long we had touchdown. We tied up the boat. Triple knotting it as if it floated away we would be screwed. Life at sea had not done the rig any good rust was a clear problem as you could see through the floor on most places.

We headed up and before long we arrive on the platform. Wow where do we go? We headed into the offices to begin with and was amazed to find everything was still there. It must have just been brought in as it looked livable. We looked through bits and pieces of paperwork then headed into the living quaters. Beds still remained with sheets on, the water still flowed, but the power was off due to the generator not being on. We continued down some stairs and into the living area with a small recreation room with a ping pong table and dartboard then on to the kitchen and dining hall.

From here we headed back on onto the deck. And were right beside the life boats. We joked about climbing in but i had the fear they would plummit into the water. Next stop the bridge. The ammount of different gauges in here was amazing, the bridge still had its original tannoy system and alert system which i couldnt resist in pushing luckily it didnt work. We also found a few devices which i didnt know their function.

Back out on to the deck we headed into the central section where the drilling equipment was located. We looked up and decided we had to make the effort to climb it. We got 80 percent of the way up but a ladder had been removed and i was not going to monkey up it as the wind was just too strong.

Back down he headed over to the control room which was sadly locked with the biggest doors youll ever see. Oh well he headed over to the radio transmitting dome instead. A few sea bird had taken up roost inside so we only managed to get a few pictures putting the camera in through the door.

We had a bit more time to spare before we had to head back so we had another wonder around before decending back down to our boat to SS Urban Explorer. The ride back was a pain as we were going against the current it took us almost 2 hours!. Boy was i glad to get to the shore!.