After polishing off most of the mainline Fleet, The Walbrook was banded around as the next one to check out. The Walbrook is one of the oldest sewers in London. However after talking to London draining legend JonDoe69 at a recent party, he was reticent to say that the Walbrook ran in the Lond0n Bridge Sewer (LBS). Going so far to suggest it ran nearby separate to the LBS, as the course didn't match. Either way, the drain on today's agenda was the LBS, Western side. In order to appease the drain0r community, I should mention that this drain is known as Stoop's Limit and Last Bastion. As it's all one connected system, it's difficult to know where and why the system is split up this way. However I’ve never understood drain naming.

After not pulling off a decent draining session for awhile due to cancellations, I heard on the grapevine that Kaitie had recently turned her hand into draining. Although only Storm Drains, the drains those not liking the poop tend to stick too. So I think it was something of a surprise to do a CSO drain. So much so that they neglected to bring gloves and had to borrow my spare set. And let's just say that Kaitie does not have quite the same glove size as me, by a long way!

The only quiet lid i'd found for the system was a utility lid, which meant that I couldn't close it properly behind me. There is nothing to pull or tie the lid down either. So stupidly/irresponsibly, I left it with a 10cms gap, and plodded off down the drain. It started as a square concrete utility style tunnel, but then after a turn, became a proper sewer. Kaitie was quickly in the flow and ready to head off. It looked a little low, so I asked if it was walkable. "It's fine" the response. 

However, as the tale about the gloves might hint at, Kaitie is not 6ft+ tall, or even 5'6" tall. So when I got into the tunnel, it was very much a crouch affair, the tunnel being about 4ft high max. It was probably around a 50m section, and I had to swing the bag around to my front. and shuffle down. Kaitie racing ahead. I was glad they did, as they got into the slightly larger tunnel below. Here we entered into an area with 3 tunnels exiting into one tunnel. There was also a side exit here that worked. Little did I know it would be the last exit point we'd see.

The next section of pipe was shorter, around 30m, and exited on the left in the picture below. into this much larger tunnel.

The most impressive bit of this part of the tunnel, was the huge brick dome roof above us. A chapel to Mr.J.Bizzle perhaps?! I was intrigued by a feature that had caught my torch light up the main tunnel, straight ahead in this pic below.

Here a tall thin tunnel merged with a more squat oval tunnel, and entered the main chamber.

Moving downstream from where we entered the tunnel, we pressed on. While Kaitie was checking out a side exit, I took a shot of the main tunnel. The side exits here were more elaborate than I'd seen before. Because we were quite far down, around 10-15m, there were ladders up to smaller tunnels and a few metres up those tunnels were exits. Although as we were to find on several occasions, they led to split lids, which are only used in a proper emergency.

The tunnel was clearly sectioned, into smaller sections. And each one had either one or two small tunnels entering this main tunnel at around 6-8ft up. The ceiling usually rose to the surface and a split lid. You can see one here where the tunnel the camera is in ends, and there's a 2m gap before the arched brickwork and lower tunnel begins. The water level dropped here, and went up to my knee. On Kaitie it went up to their lower thigh. However, props to them for continuing where others might have turned back. Kaitie only having flimsy thigh waders.

Again we came to another change in the tunnel structure, this time an RCP (Round Concrete Pipe) was fitted in, replacing the previous sewer structure. A side tunnel on the left again proved fruitless as a way out.

A look up the dark bricked side tunnel, replete with cobwebs. If memory serves correctly, the interceptor was to be found in the RCP seen above. I have seen a fair few interceptors, and this was by far the worst. It had a layer of nasty poop porridge floating on top. It took the flow off to one side, and luckily I was holding onto a support rail above it, as i put my foot down the floor disappeared. It was just a low shelf for the interceptor, so I wouldn't have disappeared into oblivion.

On climbing over a filth covered weir, I stepped down into a fairly dry fully round tunnel below. Dotted with random bits of toiletry, poop and rats. I was rather impressed with Kaitie's non-squeamishness, either that or she hid it well! The red brick wall at the end, is the wall on the extreme right of the next picture.

Looking back up the tunnel we'd emerged from on the left, we found ourselves in an oval tunnel again. The LBS is a complete hotchpotch of different size and shaped tunnels, as they were mostly built privately, and joined up in the Bazalgette era. An elaborate set of ladders and platforms went up to the surface just around the corner in the tunnel on the right. We didn't go any further on this trip, as we were both tired, and I was getting pretty badly dehydrated. Behind the camera the tunnel continues most likely down to the outfall at the Thames.

Not having found a place to exit, we now had the unenviable task of going all the way back to where we started. This involved going against the flow in the deep section preceding the interceptor. Not fun, and I was pretty damn exhausted when I got out. Being slightly responsible, I went back in urban camo to close properly the utility lid we'd entered by. However as we were walking up to it, a flat bed council lorry was parked up with flashing orange lights on the cab roof. As the guy walked up to the lid, he clocked us looking at the lid, quickly put two and two together and shouted "Oiiiiiii." We quickly legged it, and Kaitie chose different escape paths around the corner.

I went back to where we'd changed into our urban camo, and tried to quickly get off my chest waders, not an easy job. As I was taking them off two cops slowly walked past. They briefly questioned me about what I was up to, and satisfied with my story, left. As I packed up all my gear, I wanted to get back quickly to my bike, but as I was about to go down to the street I saw the flashing lights of the lorry, still parked up. I then walked back to find another way out. Just as I was approaching the spot where I’d changed and spoken to the two cops. The two cops re-appeared and came towards me. They asked if I'd been with a shorter woman tonight. I denied it and repeated the story I'd given them. They then said that a man fitting my description was seen running away after interfering with a drain cover. I denied it, even though the descriptions the council worker gave were pretty exact.

One of the cops then pulled out some blue gloves and began to search my bags, and then my pockets. This is where things got a bit weird, as I had taken some parsnips into the drain to get some pics for a joke on Facebook. I also couldn't find my screwdriver, so had taken a knife to aid access into the drains. Luckily the cutlery knife and parsnips were in the same pocket. "You eat raw parsnips?" "erm, yes officer!" After they'd finished searching me one of them stood making small talk.

Telling me about the Occupy movement who were occupying buildings in the area. He pointed to St. Alphages, a tall tower block nearby, "They've occupied that one as well, full of asbestos." I thought to myself "I know, i've climbed up to the roof!" They were obviously waiting to hear if there'd been a sighting of a short woman. With no sign after a quarter of an hour or so, on top of the time spent searching me. The constable said he was happy to let me on my way into the radio. And I walked off with a smug smile when out of sight. Still panicking, I quickly went to my bike, and got the hell out of there.

Thanks to Kaitie for being amazing.