I can't think of anywhere I'd rather work than hanging off a rope 380ft up, and you should see the view
“You get used to it, it’s good fun!”
For many people, it’s the stuff of nightmares.
Hanging off the Blackpool Tower, the entirety of the Promenade, the Irish Sea, and the Fylde coast stretching off into the horizon below you. Secured by safety ropes, but still at the mercy of wicked winds whipping around the ancient metal frame of the 132-year-old tower as you dangle some 380 feet in the air.
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But, as the saying goes, someone has to do it. Because, just like the double glazing on your semi-detached home, the windows on the Blackpool Tower need a good clean every now and again as well. Which is where the extreme window cleaners come in.
‘One of the most exciting jobs’
Brought in on a regular basis to ensure that the Blackpool Tower’s iconic SkyWalk - a gravity-defying experience which enables people to walk over 380ft of fresh air with just 5cms of glass in between them and the ground below - stays as spick and span as possible at all times, the window cleaners’ role is vital. That vertigo-inspiring encounter has to feel real, after all.
“It’s one of the most exciting jobs - to be working at the Tower top, the highest point on the Fylde coast, with a view like this,” says window cleaner Craig Burt. “I couldn’t think of any other place to spend my working time. As long as the conditions are alright, we’ll try and keep it clean on a fortnightly basis - if [the wind] is coming in off the sea, it’s not good conditions to work.”
What’s more, the experience of working in such extreme conditions in one of the most iconic buildings in the country means that, for the day, the soaring window cleaners can lay claim to having perhaps the best office view in the world.
“Obviously, who else can say they’d do it? We’re the only ones who clean it!” said Craig’s window cleaning partner. “Today’s fine because it’s quite calm, but when it’s windy you can get a bit wobbly and it’s all about making sure your feet are safe and your clip’s on. And make sure you’ve got a tight grip of the pole so you don’t drop it!
“You get used to it, so it’s good fun. We’ve been quite fortunate with Easterlies recently as well.”
How the extreme window cleaners get out there
Cleaning the Skywalk at Blackpool Tower is not for the feint-hearted. And, with the glass viewing platform being 380ft off the ground, it inevitably presents safety problems for anyone wanting to clean it.
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But it has to be done regularly to keep the view perfect for visitors, so - in 2018 - the facilities team at Blackpool Tower called on installer Eurosafe Solutions, working closely with MSA Safety, to provide the most innovative and easy to use solution available.
Eurosafe, which has worked on the O2 in London, chose the MSA Latchways overhead system for the Tower and installed a single overhead line, 10 metres long, directly below the glass walkway.
The system used heavy duty end anchors and navigated the existing structure using intermediate brackets.
A spokesman back in 2018 said: “The system was fitted in a single day, with another day for all relevant safety checks. The tight timeframe was made even more acute as the installation team could only access the walkway using the passenger lift, which was only in operation when wind speeds were low.”