Dear Ladies,
We had a really excellent visit to Ardley this afternoon, all yellow jacketed, goggled, hard-hatted, thickly gloved and wearing ear-defended, we were shown around the working site of Viridor’s energy recovery facility by a most well-informed member of Viridor’s visitor centre, whose name I most unfortunately did not get down. We began our tour with our guide telling us all about the facilities we were about to discover, then on to walk through their excellent centre before we were required to don health and safety items before descending to the working floor.
Here are a few photos to whet your appetite for your own visit and perhaps on our next scheduled WI visit in April….
that essential Dinosaur foot print!
My photos show a circular tour of the visitor centre and the entrance and I’m afraid some of them are a little unclear. No photography is allowed on the working floor but what you get is lots of steep stairways up and down, steep slopeways, huge containers, one blue, and there’s the green ceiling way up above us. Pipes travel in all directions. Green lines delineate the pedestrian pathways which must be adhered to. It’s noisy, fascinating and very futuristic and the brains behind the brains who owned the secret to the engineering intelligence belonged to a French submarine concern. The engineering of Ardley is the most exciting, amazing, wonderful heart of the enterprise which needs to be experienced, just for the thrill of it all. As soon as I encountered the pipeworks, my thoughts went straight to the building in Paris, a Museum if memory does not fail, where all the building’s innards are on the outside, which enabled me to appreciate the beauty of the structured lines. Well, that’s what I experienced!
The outside area is like a lunar landscape. The old landfill site is still be accessed for the methane gas and one day, when the technology has been created, they may be able to get at the material buried there, but the ground will have to be firm and compacted. For now, it is still unstable and they have no idea what may be mixed in with the hidden rubbish. The maps have not yet been drawn.
They have 6 open days a year when groups of two’s and three’s, families and singletons may visit and see for themselves the wonder of the works, see how the place ticks. I can’t wait to go again. All info is on Viridor website and they have a Face Book page too.
It’s a great experience…
Margaret Halstead xxx
PS.. Dear Ladies, Zandra Ryan has very kindly sent me the following four photos from her camera call for our visit to Ardley yesterday. It was such a brilliaant visit…
Dwindling world resources
the rubbish pit
the hugely firey furnace below the rubbish at Ardley
And here we are – all health & safety kitted out for our tour of Ardley with Viridor Guide