The Winchester

Following our inaugaral trip to the Tyburn, we intended to revisit and photograph the sections we’d explored. Given the advice we’d recieved on these pages we decked ourselves our in hard hats and hi viz, and all 3 of us looked legit and proper as we went about our evening’s work this time.

The manhole we intended to use was now in the middle of some roadworks, and the next one down was locked. As we walked around the area looking for lids. (hint: there’s plenty, but just not the right ones), we could see the other one we had earmarked as potentially suitable was outside a busy street with bars and restaurants. Somebody was surrounded by papparazzi as we slowly drove past, but our cameras stayed firmly locked away, our sights set on a nice pooey drain instead.

We moved on to another lead, and this yielded. The lid popped with ease, the ladder went down and with the smell we knew we were definitely in a foul water drain.

We walked in the direction this picture is facing, choosing upstream as our route. A little more effort in the push against the stream is required, but when it’s knee high sewage you’re hardly going to be going ten to the dozen anyway.  In about 10 minutes we had passed a couple of 2 foot tall inflows, both egg shaped and circular, and a couple more minutes pushing against the flow we ended up here.

Given that we’d wasted most of our evening, and the clock was now ticking past midnight, we decided to head back downstream and mark this section as somewhere else to poke past with more time, another day. We headed back with the flow and past our entrance, agreeing to give it another 10 or 15 minutes downstream, which resulted in this feed. Intersecting the top of the tunnel is the tube line, which cast huge echoes along the system. Combined with the sounds of cars driving over the old vents and manholes, the sewer does not feel remote at all.

We stopped at the junction above, turned around and headed out for the exit. This was another successful visit, in that we’d accessed another system, but a part of me says we need to keep pushing on, spending more time in the system and trying to reach an end of it. We’re very much still dipping our toes in the water, now we need to really get submerged in this draining thing.