The Winchester

January 2011

‘Rivers of Blood’

It’s rude not to stop on a long journey and let a drain take you in. Blood Creek is a culvert through Stoke-on-Trent, named for the iron deposits that colour the water towards the outfall, where I entered. There’s a couple of hundred yards of anonymous pipe before concrete ledges appear, and eventually the pipe turns into solid RCP.

The first few hundred yards of the tunnel looks like this. The water is pretty fast but doesn’t appear to ever rise higher than about knee high. Walking against the fast flow splashed water all up me and before too long, my feet were sopping. Moving on…

‘Lonesome (again)’

The next few hundred yards of pipe had ledges on the sides, assumedly added as a reinforcement for the rusting ironwork and to provide a channel towards the centre of the pipe. At points the iron was exposed at the base and had rusted through to the point you could see the edges of the excavations it was laid in. Locking the stable door once the horse has bolted?

Slide

Beyond this point (once you’ve got up the slope – I nearly took a swim) the waters slow up somewhat and are crossed by this sewage pipe. I only know it’s a sewage pipe because I poked my head a ladder on the right and witnessed the stink for myself.

Headbutt

Walking further on, there’s a couple of hundred metres of RCP, a couple of entrance chambers and finally the slide. The water is sufficiently fast here to render the slide un-navigable, and as such, I turned and left after having a play with the shit-sifting contraption visible from the stairs. It would be interesting to know what was at the top end of the slide, but time was short.

“The Devil’s checkout”

“Sift my shit”