"Bazalgette's sewer opens into a 20ft chamber...". Ah that old chestnut! The bane of all girlfriends and significant others. Never does a dinner date go by without much anxiety swaying above the fulcrum of these dreaded words. Not until safely at the restaurant or movie does everyone sigh in relief, knowing a night of larceny and adventure was narrowly averted in favor of basic human intimacy.
These words are enough to break down the spirit of the dedicated boyfriend into a squealing mass of drainer energy. Steve Duncan dropped this potent combination, knowing full well their implications and consequences. My weak point is obvious and easily exploitable. Devious bastard.
Sporting our rubbers with pride we boarded the tube, raising a few eyebrows of generally unflinching Londoners. Their trance-like state is highly resistant to distractions. Just you wait until we're lathered in London's Freshest, we'll see who's so fucking sombre then, eh? A busy lid in the the City Of London dropped us into a 5ft section of branch sewer a smidge West of the mainline London Bridge Sewer, aka Stoop's Limit.
Stoop's Limit is named so because Stoop of Sub-urban reached his sewerfresh threshold and aborted exploration. He's stubborn and hardheaded so this will surprise those who know him. This is the guy who braved the horrid floors of Confluence and lived to lift manholes in the middle of busy roads.
While many of the underground rivers of london do carry some sewage this is a bona fide, genuine oh so fresh pooptube. It's smaller in diameter than the trunk lines of the Westbourne or Fleet but the atmosphere compensates for this. Take a deep breath and fill your lungs with just a little of the humid, heavy atmosphere. It's thick with airborne sewer particles. Tastes good yes?
The Limit itself is a gorgeous piece of 6ft yellowbrick (circa 1830), perforated like the end of a watering can. I remember endless childhood days of running around under the garden sprinkler. I'd throw on my bathers, race to the backyard and play under the streams of cold water. The Limit is kind of like that but thigh deep in greywater and knee deep in shit with liquid streaming from the the walls. Each 'mud-sucking' step dislodges golden nuggets from the sedimentary layers below which bob to the surface like little submarines.
The system itself is more complicated than we first expected, with warrens of sidetunnels darting off regularly. They seem to be made just right for human passage, slightly wider than the shoulders and right on head height. Also they're far drier than than the trunk and offer a few features you'd consider unexpected anywhere but London.
Our quest for the rumoured 20ft junction proved uneventful, a mere 4ft deep river of effluent in a Middle Level Sewer hindered our progress. Did the explorers of old deal with this kind of shit? I suspect the junction was only 20m around the bend so a boat and rope contraption would suffice. Alternatively we could enter via the upper reaches of Stoop Limit and crawl the last 200m in a 3ft tunnel.
I write this from the relative comfort of a 2 seater couch, surrounded by buzzing computers. Open plan offices are great until the 9am worker bees interrupt my catnap. Steve and Moe are probably napping aboard a coach to Paris, good luck and godspeed to them!
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p l e s n p a <- build your own snappel
dsankt
pplanes
dsankt
Air33
dsankt
Isc
snap
TBH
jannx aka jannx