The Arqiva Tower

SUNDAY

For the past few days I have been bidding on a replacement Flymo electric hover mower on eBay, but this morning I was well outbid and started to look elsewhere. 

I found an identical mower advertised on Facebook Marketplace and this afternoon I made a 45 mile round trip to Fitzwilliam near Wakefield  to collect it. 

I came home via Emley and stopped off at the Arqiva Tower to get this blip.

The Emley Moor transmitting station is made up of a 319 metre high concrete tower and apparatus. It began transmitting in 1971 and is a Grade II listed building. It's the tallest freestanding structure in the UK and the 24th tallest in the world.

In 2021, the antenna at the very top was removed due to technical errors and it was replaced by a shorter antenna of 11m but the structure still remains the tallest freestanding structure in the United Kingdom.

The tower is not open to members of the public, but I am lucky to have been up to the top on a few occasions. One of these was as a part of a training programme for telecommunications engineers. We took the lift up to the observation platform and then, kitted with harnesses and radiation exposure monitors we climbed up through the middle of the aerial at the top. 

There is a trap door at the top and one could actually stand on the top of the lower aerial. I gave that bit a miss as my legs were becoming a bit wobbly. I always regret not climbing out.