TL;DR - A trip inside an engineering project bigger than you can imagine.
Ever heard of Electric Mountain? We hadn't and were a bit shocked when we found out about the place... this is a British engineering project on a scale you wouldn't believe.
Long story short - the UK needed to be able to adjust electricity generation at short notice (like when we all put the kettle on after the Great British Bake Off) so we built this. There are two lakes, one at the top of the mountain and another at the bottom. When we need electricity, they open the taps and water pours from the top lake into the bottom, generating electricity as it goes. When there's no demand for electricity, they pump the water back up to the top lake. The entire power station is built inside the mountain!
There's a visitor centre, shop and cafe here but the real excitement is the tour. You can pay on the day but it's advisable to book in advance. The tour lasts just over an hour... you see a film about the power station first and then board a bus which drives over to the mountain and then drives down inside it... yes, there are kilometres and kilometres of roads here UNDERGROUND! The scale of the place is immense... the turbine hall is so large that it could comfortably contain St Paul's Cathedral, and the whole cave and tunnel system is man made. Apparently it's the largest engineering project ever undertaken in the UK, and remains the fastest responding power station in the world.
Our tour guide, Wyn, was fantastic. He did a great job of striking a balance between seriousness and humour, and keeping everything at a level which kids and adults would both enjoy and learn from.
A few key points to note. Cameras and mobile phones are not allowed - you'll need to put them in a locker before boarding the bus. The lockers need a £1 coin, but it's refunded to you afterwards. Secondly, there are no toilets on the tour so make sure you go beforehand.
From the exterior, you'd have no idea that there was a power station here, let alone such a huge one. This is such a magnificent engineering project that I feel like we should be shouting about it from the rooftops... the only reason I've not given it 5 stars is that I wanted more! I wanted to explore every inch of the place! And the rules on cameras mean I can't show you any photos! read more