I've never really seen the fascination of drains and going into one never really appealed to me. I got a message from fellow local explorer Evil Genius saying that he'd seen there was a culverted section of the River Bourne which might be worth a look. Now as it was a mere 10 minutes from my house, I thought it would be rude not to have a look at least. So, after work one evening, I donned my wellies, grabbed a torch and went to see if I could find it. I'd been scanning Google Maps all day and had 2 points where I thought it might be. As it happened, I was wrong on both counts but using a little brain power, I'd soon located the entrance which wasn't far away. I went inside and ended up walking quite a way in awe. I took a few iPhone snaps and headed back to the car.
Fast forward a couple of days and Evil Genius is knocking at my door nursing a hangover ready to go and do a proper explore. It's only small but we still managed to spend 3 1/2 hours down there and I learnt that if I'll be doing this again then I need to invest in something that's going to keep me a bit drier than wellies. We made our way to the entry point and had a choice of 2 directions. One was a wider brick archway but not much head clearance and much deeper water, deep enough for me to get a soaking and I knew from my previous visit that it didn't lead anywhere interesting so we opted for the upstream route.
The first section you enter is a couple of storeys high and reinforced by concrete buttresses
Looking back towards the outfall
Continue on and round a bend and the boring concrete changes to a lovely red brick tunnel at the top of a couple of steps. The water was really pushing through this part and it was pretty slippery underfoot.
Along the way were various pipes coming through the sides of the tunnel, some were flowing with water, some not!
Every so often it would open out into a section with a manhole cover above
The brickwork then changed into the boring preformed RCP so we followed this as far as it would go passing a few more openings for the manholes. We eventually arrived at another brick tunnel and this time it was pear shaped. In the distance we could hear rushing water and were keen to find out what the noise was.
We reached the end of the tunnel and the noise of rushing water that we could hear was about 6 pipes all converging together. We couldn't go any further unless we were crawling on hands and knees because the pipes were much smaller, maybe I'll don my wetsuit when the weather gets better and see where they lead.
I've got a new found respect for those who go draining. It's not something you really think about until you've done it yourself but these environments are really tricky to photograph and light, they just seemed to suck up the light from my little P7 so I think something bigger is needed for the future. I'll definitely get out there and do some of the bigger stuff, I really enjoyed it and I know this is just a tiny one in comparison but it's great to see the infrastructure that was built brick by brick which will one day be replaced with the featureless RCP which is a great shame.
