Posted 2008-01-22. Tags: fapfapfap, fleet, london, sewer, uk.

Visiting explorers pump new blood into a city, let's break this down real simple like:

•  The visitor gets to enjoy their time in the city more by exploring some things they otherwise wouldn't.
•  Locals love showing off their fancy locations. It's fun blowing peoples minds. In return they blow you.
•  Visitors often inspire the locals to try things they've never done, or not done in a long long time.
  
•  Visitors might know a few tricks and provide access to something thought unexplorable by the locals.
•  Everyone knows visitors are less likely to get busted and have a greater ability to diffuse situations with authority figures.
•  Visiting other cities strengthens the ties between exploring groups and the community as a whole. Ever wonder how the caveclan (with 200 members) gets so much done and have so much fun? Strong community with strong ties between groups in different cities.

Steve D dropped from the sky into London town wrapped in casual black, crooning to Johnny Cash and as usual grinning teeth from ear to ear. Welcome to Londinium, mecca of the underground river. Eleven in fact, count them on yer fingers there banjo boy. Today we'll be concerned with one: The River Fleet.

The River Fleet is the best known of these rivers, having served as a canal up until 1765. It was the largest of the rivers and the last to be buried. Small topside clues give evidence of its original existence and the sewer it became. We met the familiar face of Loops at the lid, waited for a lull and dropped in.



The Fleet Sewer is confusing enough to give Escher a migraine. I can't possibly describe the interconnected structure but this the most interesting 500m of sewer/drain I've seen. You have (roughly upstream -> downstream):

• 12ft redbrick tunnel, with a junction into the parallel yellowbrick storm relief sewer known as Wren's Cache.
• Two 15ft tall, 6ft wide arched brick tunnels
• 15ft tall 10ft wide brick tunnel, lots of little side inlets an oddities.
• 25ft tall brick lozenge with a wooden diversion into a lower level sewer.
• Four parallel tunnels (2 stacked on 2) with catwalks and ladders coated in a mixture of tidal filth and grey water.
• 4 giant iron flaps at the end of each tunnel.
• Climb up the ladders and catwalks to find yourself in a series of pedestrian access tunnels. They're standing height and wide enough to talk comfortably. Damp and humid.
• These tunnels leads to rooms full of old machinery used to manually operate various floodgates.
• The tunnels also drop you into the diverted tunnel, downstream of a floodgate.
• Take another pedestrian tunnel and you drop back into the mainline tunnel, downstream of the 4 large flaps mentioned above.
• Also in the junction with the 4 flaps are the 2 small flaps at the terminus of the Wren's Cache, the relief tunnel.
• These tunnels merge together in a large arched tunnel and continue downstream towards the Thames. By this stage it's all tidal water and nasty to boot.

Built a 3D model in your mind, squire? Good.



The Thames has a high-low tide differential between 4-7m, meaning it rises rapidly during mid tide. In 30 minutes of shooting the convergence of Wren's Cache and The Fleet the tide rose 1m. Timing is therefore very important, overstay your welcome and you're swimming out, enter too early and you're swimming in. Tides are nothing like this back in Brisbane, fluctuating by at most 2m. Brisbane has the best known tidally affected big drains in Australia so I've just gone from a little bastard tidal city to a big one. All hail the mighty sine curve.



Upstream is relatively plain but for some bolted concrete tunnel reminiscent of bunker drain. Thin tendrils of minerals drape hair-like from the ceiling making the trek upstream worthwhile. A 2ft side-tunnel terminates at a strange manhole - hinged and rusted but elevated from the ground by about an inch giving a view into some kind of brick basement.



Even the name rings true, Fleet is the brand of laxative we administered to our New York friends. In Anglo-Roman the word 'Floet' means 'tidal inlet' or 'a place where vessels float'. Go have a look, you might find some floaters of your own.

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