Views from Oswestry

Oswestry, a teeny town north-ish of Shrewsbury. While it takes only thirty minutes to drive to Oswestry, the over-priced bus routes to anywhere, and the closure of the train station means that to anyone from Oswestry who doesn't drive, Oswestry is The Universe. I used to live there, and now granted the insight of my escapades in Shrewsbury, I took a break from Shrewsbury, and went to see the world of opportunity that I had missed out on when I lived in Oswestry. Oswestry indeed had many rooftop access points and we would find them.

And where better to start than the tallest accessible part- Santander. Please note- we don't vandalize, steal, force entry or harm property, or disclose means of access.

See? Oswestry's a lovely town. Of course the above picture was taken on Christmas day, so because this building is a bank, albeit slightly incompetent as far as banks go, usually it's only climbable at night.

One thing we did find was that, unlike Shrewsbury, Oswestry's rooftops were a lot more connected, and often the view we had was actually nowhere near the means of access, and the route in question required a lot more skill and imagination.

The roof of this clothes shop is a great example:

You get your pretty standard view, but the way of getting to the means of access is nowhere near the actual building, and in addition, we found that there was imaginative room for expansion, onto the sloped rooftop of HSBC.

Now, we'd gotten down whole streets by straddling pointed rooftops before, but nothing this big- HSBC has lethal drops on either side, and is pretty high up, and the period of time we'd be shuffling along precariously was quite lengthy. But it was worth it. Sure, we could have fallen to our deaths, but it was a lot of fun.

Ultimately we found ourselves on one of my favourite rooftops, Halifax, and a view of Bailey Street, which is fairly similar to Pride Hill in Shrewsbury.

Worryingly, Halifax had a ladder that led from the rooftop down to a portion behind the building. And what did we find? A stairway that went beneath the bank! It was an interesting find, but worrying because the door at the bottom of the stairs was wide open. And what did we find?

Bank details! Hundreds of them!

I mean, part of me is ecstatic that my adventures have taken me into something as unique a find, but at the same time, had we not been benevolent explorers, this could be a huge can of worms opened. These files contained details on many, many people, and it seemed to have all been untouched for years. Rooms like this shouldn't just be open to the public, even if said public has to scramble over rooftops to get to it. Luckily, our last visit to Halifax revealed the door was now locked, but how long had it been open for?

More shots of the cellar-

Anyway, that's it for our first batch of Oswestry photos. I would return to my old hometown for more pictures at a later date, but seeing as this blog has "Shrewsbury" in the title, I should probably make it more focused on that town instead.

More Shrewsbury photos next blog.