No. 55

Three weeks today and I'll be in Iceland! The four of us had a 'planning meeting' today and got our itinerary sorted so it's starting to get a lot closer! Thermals bought and at the ready.

I was wandering around half an hour before to look for a blip and stumbled across this building quite by accident. I've seen it a couple of times before on walking tours of Manchester but couldn't ever remember where it was:

The internet says:

Tucked away in Chinatown, protected by barbed wire and high walls, an unremarkable building guards the entrance to one of Manchester’s best-kept secrets. The Guardian Underground Telephone Exchange (GUTE) also known as ‘Scheme 567’ is a 1950s nuclear-hardened facility designed to safeguard cold war communications. It is one of three such exchanges, the others being Birmingham's Anchor Exchange and London's Kingsway Exchange.

The site was classified under a ‘D Notice’ in the fifties to prevent the media from writing about it. It was declassified in 1968, but apparently those with knowledge of the site were still having to sign the Official Secrets Act in the 1970s. These days its existence is public knowledge.

It was connected to four miles of tunnels running under the city centre and the plan was at the first sign of nuclear conflict, all of the leading politicians and others would be sent down there and could survive for a couple of months.

The building is now owned by BT and houses communications cables.

Quote for today:
There is a light at the end of every tunnel. Some tunnels just happen to be longer than others.
- Ada Adams