FILM REVEALS HOW BRAVE TECHNICIANS REACH THE MOST IN
40 Sunday Mail email
As managing director of a company who specialise in industrial abseiling, it’s just what he does.
He said: “We always joke about being higher than the birds. We love it.
“It’s a bit like people who climb a munro at the weekend and you get to the top and it’s fantastic and peaceful. It can be like that every day in our job – it’s exciting, peaceful and different.”
Just how different is being brought into focus in a new documentary. Cùm Grèim!, which is on BBC Alba on Wednesday, follows companies who reach places others can’t.
For Stephen’s firm, Edinburgh-based Geckotech Solutions, that includes the Forth Bridge.
The cameras follow some of his workers as they carry out maintenance on the iconic structure – and getting to touch history, quite literally, is not lost on any of them.
He said: “It’s fantastic knowing it is not hugely accessible to everybody. Over the years, we have found original rivets and things like that in some of the beams. And there are some bits of the bridge which, if not untouched, have been touched lightly over the last 130 years, only visited by a handful of people.
“It remains my absolute favourite. How did they do that then? With the technology we have now, you maybe fathom how to do it but how did they do it in the 1880s? It’s incredible – absolutely amazing.
“Another job we did was painting HMS Belfast in London and that is a f loating museum. It served in World War II and in