00:00I've come in early today because my task for the day is to climb to the top of Salisbury
00:15Cathedral Spire and change the aircraft warning lights at the top of the spire.
00:22There's four of them.
00:24The south side has failed, the lights have been in there for six years so they've come
00:28to the end of their life so I'm going to go up and replace all four.
00:33So we're all harnessed up, ready to go, we're just walking through the cloisters.
00:38I've got Richard here, he is going to be staining the weather door whilst we're up there and
00:45also giving us a hand to change the bulbs and remove one of the old wind speed meters.
00:53So we're just going up the first spiral staircase.
00:59I'm puffing because I've got a heavy pack on and there's a hundred odd steps.
01:09And we're just going into the cave roof space here.
01:18Our staircase is getting even narrower now.
01:23I'll just show you where my feet are, so this is the narrowest staircase that we have.
01:41So I'm at the top of the tower now.
01:44332 steps from the ground or 220 feet and we've still got another 184 feet to go via
01:58ladders inside the spire.
02:03This is one of the ladders and we have fall arrest rope protection going all the way up
02:13on each ladder until we get to the top.
02:18So I'm right at the top of the spire inside.
02:21I'm just ascending the final ladder, pulling up all my safety equipment and I will clip
02:31to this rope in a minute but I just want to give you a view from below.
02:44Do you want to reach around here mate?
02:49There?
02:50Yeah.
02:55Wow, look at the view from here.
02:58Amazing.
03:07So you see the difference in stone here.
03:09This is our local stone.
03:11It's your mark.
03:12This is actually stone from Leicestershire I think.
03:17It's called Clipsham from the Isle of Rutland.
03:20This was up here in the 1950s.
03:23So this is the starting point.
03:25All the stone above was replaced between 1949 and 1951.
03:43So we just opened this one up here and replaced it.
03:52Arthur's just done doing that one there now.
03:56You see below me Richard's painting the weather door with linseed oil.
04:02Just to give it a little bit more longevity.
04:08Yeah, we'll just take that off.
04:11Keep coming up now mate.
04:16Windy up here, Rich.
04:18Yeah.
04:19Lovely.
04:20Good.
04:21Here we are again.
04:22Yay!
04:25Three musketeers on the top of this fire.
04:31I'm coming in now.
04:33Yeah.
04:35Just looking at all the marks left by craftspeople in here.
04:41Look, 1990.
04:45There's 1951 there, look.
04:47That was when they repaired the top 50 feet of the spire.
04:51Someone's had enough up there.
04:53Oh yeah, 1925.
Comments