As a maintenance tradesman from Bolton working all over the northwest its a wonderful sight when you spot winter hill from various points accross the NW.

I retired from the Broadcast company in Melbourne that designed and built the Digital TV transmitting antenna panels for this site and other sites in the UK. There is also a lot of other equipment for both DTV and FM that originated Down Under in Melbourne. I worked for RFS for 16 years. Greg

Been up there many times but always good to see somebody else pass comments about it.. Great video and thank you .. always baffles me when people give something that somebody else has presented for peoples enjoyment the thumbs down .. Utter knobs them people .. keep them vids coming bud ;)

Thanks Martin. Very informative as ever. Your Granada rentals career brought back memories. We had a telly from them in the late 70s and after it had been on for a bit it started to get this high pitched whistle, which you could stop by banging the top with the flat of your hand. The whistle came back a few hours later though so you had to tap it again. As time went on you had to hit it harder and it stopped for shorter times, until we were belting hell out of it every half an hour. Anyway, one night it started whistling and my dad give it a thump with his big shovel hand but it carried on whistling, so he took his slipper off and give it a hell of a whack, next thing theres this blinding flash, a loud pop noise, the set went of and smoke come out of the back. I remember my mum let out a scream! We had no telephone then so next day it was a trip into town to the Granada shop to report it and a chap came to collect it and replace it with a COLOUR set. Wow! Were we posh or what! Cheers the the memories Martin.

Very useful and informative, Martin. Thanks.

Great stuff Martin so enjoyable The infrastructure built over the years and the reasons for it is amazing appreciate seeing all the brickwork to the old buildings something which is never going to be used again to build buildings Love it !cheers

I did some army training out of Ramsbottom in 1989 and hiked up past that mast. It was just as cloudy then. I've been meaning to drive up north and see it again. Great video.

Another great video not been up there for about 30 years must go and have another look next year your videos make me want to go out and explore. I thought you had ringway Manchester with you another great You tuber with great content thanks for sharing guys

Absolutely brilliant mate loved it!

You always have interesting stuff. Thank you

Great production and editing; particularly enjoyed the steady beat with the overlay - you’ve got a real talent 👍

Never been up to da top of Rivington Pike another great video and of course clicked on da thumbs up as always 👍👍👍

Excellent video Martin really enjoyed it thanks. John

Great video once again Martin, Ikley moor transmitter has a fantastic story to tell if you get chance! Well done again Martin!

Very interesting and atmospheric... Thank you Martin..xx

The plane had come from the Isle of man carrying as you said motor traders. The effects of the crash as can be expected was devastating to the Island. On a lighter note, on the Isle of man we get our terrestrial tv form local boosters, a much reduced service, do I decided I wanted the full service for my T.V. licence. So worked out if I had a clear line of sight to Winterhill from 5 miles inland on the Isle of man, I did put a b&q aerial up in the right direction worked out on Google earth and a full tv package was mine. Great video by the way

In the late 1960s a kid went up the tower. He never came down after disappearing into low cloud. Firemen went up but found no trace of him. His name was hugh binhad. True story.

Ghosts of times past ,very eerie listening back to the sounds of tv from my childhood,Will have to have a blast up there on the motorbike👍🏼👍🏼great vid Martin.Picture box and World in action takes me right back.

That was brilliant ! I worked in Horwich for a few years and had a couple of strolls over Winter Hill, its a great place with old coal mines and the transmitter

Every video of yours on Manchester makes me want to come and do some exploring. Fascinating city and great content delivery. Great music too.

Just found your channel. Very good really enjoy your vids !!!!

Great Video - most times I’ve been up there it’s been misty -but on a clears summers day you can see Blackpool-Derbyshire-and Southport -I Liked again 👍👍

Another very interesting video! So much has happened as what you'd think would be an isolated place!

6:14-7:33 the combinations of visuals and old clips was eerie but beautiful.

The view from my front room window for years until i moved to bury when im travelling home the sight of winter hill in the distance gives me comfort im nearly home 🏡 🙌

Great video dude! Very interesting. Have relatives who live near Bury and in Bolton so know the mast well.

So Interesting. Like you we got our TV from Winter Hill as kids. Never knew where it was or how impressive it is.

Ex Bolton lad here, been up there many times, Easter traditional walk was from the transmitter to Rivington Pike, great views in fine weather can see ships on the Irish Sea, and Anglesey.....always weather permitting.

Superb video drove past this so many times in the distance on the m61.....

Another great video Martin. I've been up there myself as the views on a clear day are amazing! Nice to see Lewis again 😉 Good selection of theme tunes but my memory is rubbish lol

It’s lovely up there, I live at the bottom in Horwich these days. Bit different from Higher Broughton where I moved from and Miles Platting/Openshaw where I was born and brought up.

Brill & love the sound clips. Sadly I can’t remember any of those that haven’t already been answered!

That picture box music stuck in my mind a long time & the world in action music.

1.World in Action 2.Tales of the Unexpected 3.Picture Box 4.Thames tv 5.White Horses 6.So it Goes Mr Manchester... 7. Corrie 8.Clive Roslin (radio & TV announcer) How did i do Martim?

I went walking up there with my Dad during the 1976 drought! Amazing place. We saw that gravestone you showed as well . . . . there was a place called Jacob's Ladder up there too. Nice one!

Cheers Martin used to go upto Rivi all the time as a kid great spot wi Barns and bikes on a Sunday Reservoirs and the bridges great bit of engineering Do a bit more on Rivi Leadmine Valley Oh well doing a bit of reminiscing while I am sat here in Oz. Great work Martin

I have worked at Winter Hill telephone exchange, was one of my sites when I was an engineer with BT.

I grew up in Blackrod on the side that faced Rivington and Winter Hill in the 60s and 70s before moving down South, then London and now Hungary. It's like seeing an old friend again! Used to explore Rivi occasionally but was a bit far away for a 10 year old to go hiking alone! The Chinese gardens and the Blue lagoon were great in summer, but never got as far as seeing the transmitter. I hope there's footage somewhere of going up inside the tower! On another note, I remember there being a brick cylinder surrounding a mine or ventilation shaft at these coordinates: 53.585316, -2.563146 in a little coppice on a hill or spoil mound - we climbed up it and looked down to see the reflection of the sky in the water hundreds of feet below. The air stank of coal fumes, and I could see smaller tunnels leading off the sides of the main shaft. Very scary! I wonder if it is still there, or if they've filled it in. There used to be a lot of coal mining in the area. Found a similar one on the way to Haigh Hall, but can't remember exactly where it was. Was also a famous and lethal rope swing in Arley near the canal west of Blackrod and on the side of a small rivine - We'd get on the swing, pick up speed and be 60 feet in the air for a good few seconds as it swung out! Nice memories!

If it wasn't so foggy you could probably see my house from there! Fantastic video!!!!

Interesting video thanks.

I haven't heard that "Picture box" theme tube in years!!

A bit of an FYI, I used to run cables to a few of these transmitter 'shacks' at the base of the antennas, and one of the questions I get asked all the time was, why are the guide cables slack, and the reason is that on windy days, the tower needs to flex. If they were pulled tight, the strain on the cables would be too much and they could fail. A great vid Martin, and I encourage people to see these massive towers. I hope one day to see the Naval ELF tower in Western Australia, it's called Tower Zero and is 387 m (1,270 ft) tall !

I have always found it fascinating that you all use vertical polarization for the repeaters/translators. When I saw old images of Aerials on roof tops, they were always turned 90 degrees. We don’t have that here in the states.

picture box?, world in action, tales of the unexpected, corrie.....great video Martin, I've not been up this way for many, many years, I must take a trip up there sometime. I always say I bet it looks fantastic from up there on a clear Bonfire night or maybe New years eve! Take it easy mate. Dave.

When I used to fly from Barton we'd sometimes climb through the clouds to break out in the sunshine 'on top' and see just the top of Winter Hill mast sticking up out of the cloud deck! The tragedy of the Bristol Wayfarer that crashed on the hill was that it was off course as the pilots were tracking the wrong radio beacon in cloud and thought they were west of the high ground. In fact they had flown down the valley to east of Winter Hill below the level of the top of the hill (but being in cloud they could see nothing). Tragically, an air traffic controller at Ringway saw them appear on radar well east of track and not knowing how low they were he gave them a heading change to the right (west) to put them on track for Ringway. This took them straight into the hillside.

Great video, felt like I was watching a documentary ha. In a good way. I’m meeting Lewis soon, where hopefully il get to bring and use the drone. Cool to see some drone footage 🙂👍🏻 Andy

ahhhh the creepy Picture Box tune, World In Action theme i thought was rather weird too. Hang on , the video, another informative video from Martin. ((i will have nightmares about that Picture Box tune uurrggghhh )

I heard Tales of the Unexpected, Picture Box, The Granada caption theme, Corrie (obviously).Winter Hill was also part of the Backbone network that would relay (with many other towers) information from the South up to the North in the event of a catastrophic network failure (Nuclear War). There is a reason so many of them are miles from nowhere. They were maintained by BT and had very distinct shapes to the towers, that lattice structure was one of them next to winter hill TV mast ;)

When I was flying out of Barton we would use the mast as a visual indicator ....... If you could see the top of the mast you were good to go with VMC flights! Obviously there was more to consider than that, but it was a handy thing! The mast itself is an excellent visual reference point for navigation!

Please do more plane crash sites. There are plenty to visit on the moors, I used to hike out to them when I lived in Manchester. Very desolate, sad places but I am sure you would do them justice.

We can see this tower from the Moors around Sheffield. I had no idea exactly where it was or how tall.

I'm sure I heard Tales of the Unexpected, The Tames Weekend TV bite, Definitely Coronation Street, but as I am not a local and we only had certain shows in Australia I am vaguely familiar with one or two others, but can't name them! What a fascinating episode - and I loved the opening, although I wonder whether it's just me or if that little girl playing noughts and crosses with a clown doll in the test pattern image creeps everyone out??!!

A landmark we can see from all over, especially coming up the M6, as it tells us we are nearly home. I worked on one of the smaller aerials at the side in the 80s, servicing the generators, it was used by the police communications. The others were for other emergency services.

The TV and radio engineering itself is a fascinating subject. A few snippets - The aircraft warning lights are now LEDs not bulbs - they are phenomenally bright. Winter Hill has c70 relays that feed directly off the Winter Hill services and in total serves over 4m people. The transmitters are at ground level - the signals are fed up the tower using huge feeder cables to each antenna stack. The tv feeder cables look like drain pipes and are essentially coax cables, but, they cannot be seen at Winter Hill as they are inside the tower. Much space inside will be taken up by these feeder cables. In Winter, engineers will walk into site if they cannot get vehicles up the hill and they will stay there if necessary to protect and maintain the services in bad weather. This hard work and dedication usually goes unseen and unnoticed. The combined transmitter power output is huge - it will easily cook you from the inside if you are exposed to the RF - extremely dangerous stuff to be close too. The stays (guy cables) have many hundred tons of tension in them. They are thicker than your wrist and are re-tensioned regularly - indeed, it looks like re-tensioning was possibly being done in the video. The recent fire that was set on the moor up there put the whole structure at risk - great efforts were done over several days to cool the stays down. Ice was mentioned, but, workers on the tower also have to be very careful. Something like a dropped washer can bounce off the structure and spin out some distance and is potentially a killer for up to 200 feet out.

I was a JET (Junior engineer in training) in 1969 for the ITA, about 3 years after the tubular mast went into service. I now live in Australia, at 76 years old it is good to see it is still standing as it nearly went the same way as the higher sister mast at Emley Moor that winter. Some spectacular drone shots, I never climbed the mast. The plane crash was about one year after the station opened and the enginneers who were on shift that night still worked at the Transmitter and related events of tht terrible night. It was the copilot who staggered through the front doors all torn and in shock. This was a complete surprise to the shift engineers settling down to stay overnight at the transmitter because of the snow road blockage. Winter is extremly bleak and twice a day we took weather readings. We used the platforms on the mast to measure cloud height, however all to often we were standing in the cloud. Ice on the guy wires and could approach six feet in diameter and about that diameter it was a main contributor to the downfall of Emley Moor. It used breakup and fall spectacular and probably still does today.

Welt to Uni in Bolton and used to always be able to see it from around town. Since moving back down south I'm within spitting distance of Sandy Heath transmitter.

Was up at Rivington Barn a few weeks ago lovely area when the sun is shining , bit of a bugger when the weather comes in, cracking views all around from up there. Never knew about the two incidents you reported on. Another plane crash not many know about is the Salford Lancaster you might want to research that one for a video.

I can see Winter Hill transmitter from my house, I kind of gauge what the weather's like by seeing if I can see the lights at night. The Yorkshire equivalent is Emly Moor transmitter between Huddersfield and Wakefield. It serves Yorkshire from the Pennine Hills in the West to the North Sea coast in the East. It's height is 1079 feet.

Only one I knew was Coronation Street, but also the Thames TV theme. (which reminded me instantly of "Minder") Its funny, you couldn't REALLY have done this video without doing some of the themes, its history as well. (as for not knowing the themes, I'm currently in New Zealand! A little bit out of range for me to have tuned into, right? :) ) AS FOR THE PLANE.... we had a few of those travelling between ChristChurch in NZ and the Chatham Islands. They were known (here and in the UK) as "40,000 rivets flying in formation"... the last plane was removed from service in the 70's.

Realy good that Martin

Was up there once hiking with my mate and we came across a couple having nookie in a car parked at the bottom of the mast. Wouldn't have minded but it was 2pm on a Sunday afternoon with loads of people about! My mate gave the lass a thumbs up when she popped her head up 🤣🤣

There is a small lift at one of the service hatches that takes you higher. My friend and I entered the tower though the cable inlet and climbed up the inside. And came to the first opening looked out and then discovered the lift. Then chickend out and when down..

very interesting martin, i remember going up there to RIVINGTON PIKE and there were two medieval barns there, are they still there please, thanks beryl

I knew the manager of the station he lived three doors down from me in heywood ,wild place been up there many times with the rochdale ramblers

Little known features of Winter Hill......if you can get down to the anchor blocks (I could because I worked there) & bang the cables with a hammer it makes a sound like the laser blasters in Star Wars.......The Winter Hill tubular mast is the same as the one at Emely Moor that collapsed.....I had a mate that was at Emely Moor the night it collapsed & saw the end of the BBC TV hall dissapear & had the pleasure of explaining to the contol centre is that only 3ft of it was left!......and finally, it's got a dent! Ice formed one winter, fell off, but a crosswind blew it back & slammed into the mast some 20ft off the ground. It was later plated up with angle iron.

Interesting watch. Someone went to the Public Record Office (now National Archives) in Kew, London, and found the entire crash investigation file on the plane crash. It is very detailed (including some graphic photos), saying it put the issue of blame on members of the flight crew for following the wrong radio beacon.

A brilliant and touching tribute to the Winter Hill transmitter and the programmes it broadcast. As a child I remember tuning the old black and white 405 lines TV into the Winter Hill transmitter, a name to capture your imagination!

Bloody hell, picture box theme music. Was always a bit creepy

The tune on your video is called Walk 'n' talk.

I remember reading a magazine article by an airline captain who set out to fly every type of commercial plane available during his career, up to and including Concord. He publish his reports in a magazine for pilots. He flew that particular Bristol cargo plane featured in the video and the regular pilot shut down one of the engines. Training pilots do this to see how the pilot being tested copes. After a short time our reporter said to the regular guy I can´t maintain altitude on one engine and was met with the reply "Yes, I know, terrible isn´t it." Normally twin engine planes can manage to stay up and climb at a very much reduced rate. So, with bad weather and if one engine had packed up, no wonder that particular plane crashed.

As best as I can remember my dad,s info on the plane crash, the pilot was lost in the fog and mistook the tv mast for a guidance beacon and unfortunately he thought he was many miles away at a much higher altitude hence crashing into the moor, as far as I know the plane had no defects.

Haha, intro reminded me of Life on Mars....

I nearly got them all same as Mr Grange says below, except the last one, I remember the voice but never knew the name. I think 6 is Tony Wilson.

Thanks very interesting is this were the old Granada signal cans from.?

Thats my forth video on this Sunday 11th Sept 2022, a big thank you and its raining in mid cheshire again. Ps we had a Finlandia TV rented from Granada a good set 26inch screen.

I walked up there in 2005, it was a Very long walk as the damn thing just doesn't seem to get any closer until the final few hundred yards! Ha ha. You could get to within almost touching distance at that time, so I got some great shots looking right up from the bottom. Great report as always, I think Winter hill was channel 55 terrestrial. Was that right?

Did you grab a pint in 'the slaughtered lamb'? Only joking Martin another great vjdeo mate.world in action,tales of the unexpected ,london weekend television.brings back memories when we had to put 50p in the back of the tv and i always thought if you didnt switch the tv off when the dot was in the middle it would blow up?

With grateful thanks to the transmitter people for not letting you up in that thing!!!! Three bits of history learned, thank you nicely. Bit of a short one this time? Did the weather have something to do with it!!

Oh man I remember Granada. My mum and dad rented an Atari 2600 from them for the summer back in '84. Granada Canada had some really aweful commercials on the telly.

wow what is that transmitter information tune called at the beginning of the video

Spotted you raving on the hill😂😂

Is that ringway manchester up there with you l Am subbed to him for radios

With a transmitter pushing out gigawatts its a wonder you didnt loose control of the Drone !

Does anyone remember the great Manchester radio voice Roger Moffat ? He was before my time but my dad and his mates used to drink with him in Town. Apparently old Rog was a bit of a lush and would stagger out of the pub completely p*ssed. An hour later he would read the local news perfectly, apparently quite sober. What a professional!

Wow I was a girl when most of those programmes came out, I was probably one of the only kids in my class that liked picture box lol, I used to be mesmerised by that spinning box haha (I was born in 1968) x

Ummm....why is there chain hoists holding the guy wire to the anchor point in the beginning of the video?

Can you comment on Life on Mars, the TV series? For example, was it really shot in Manchester?

World in Action , Tales of the Unexpected and Coronation Street are the only ones I can name .

Tales of the unexpected. Corrie , London weekend television ?.

Remember some of the Granada jingle. The great service you get, Renting your colour set, From Granadaaaa

Climb the long grassy track to the top of Winter Hill Climb the real rocky track to the top, I'll see you back I'll see you back on Winter Hill

that World in Action music used to put the fear of god in me as a child. I was always about plane crashes or murders etc.

@ 6:00 music. World in Action, Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected, Picture Box, Thames Television intro, The White Horses, So It Goes presented by Our Tony❤️, Coronation Street, BBC2 closedown announcement.

5:22 "... There's also microwave dishes that curry all sorts of things... " 😂

Go cycling up that hill in summer.... get to the top blowing out of my arse lol . My mate who goes with me is a machine and doesn't even get out of breath. The views are amazing in summer. Snowdonia , Blackpool tower , isle of man all easily viewed....... You should have visited the gardens on the other side near the pike

Miss this version of you Martin, your vids were much better with just you, and occasional splash of music too!

How much power does it need ?,and where from ?

my mums boss Fred Kennish survived the winter hill plane crash, he was co owner of Crosbie, cain and kennish on the isle of man.

So that’s what the red lights are... Such a tall structure RIP

Can see why you like OMD with dance moves like that!