With a heave the lid was open. Both its layers stood upright on the street. The flat steel top cover and the bars below. We descended the ladder and into the dark. There are no pictures to accompany this post. It is simply here to document the raw, fresh experience of being underground in London for the first time.

The brick tunnel floor was mostly covered in a slippery slime. A combination of silt, water and years of shit that was slowly decomposing. The rats scurried away from our lights as we walked along the ledges along the narrow channel of the stream. Things would float past us in the water.

Eventually we came to the point where the ledges stopped and we had to step into the shallow flow. As we walked further forward, a large fountain of water flew out of one of the walls and flew into the stream with a roar. There were other noises in the dark. Rumbles, crashes and bangs. Each one familiar but impossible to place. Was that  a car going overhead or was it someone else popping a lid? The louder noises were enough to terrify.

We walked deeper into the dark. Past ways out that had been bricked up. From one section of tunnel into another, the brick work subtly changing and eventually we hit a large iron flap. The four of us stood and looked at it. It was huge and a small flap at the bottom of the main gate let the water of the stream flow through. We put out hands and our strength to it and it budged by only a few inches. We could crawl through the flap? No. No one wanted to get wet. We back tracked to the last lid and examined it. It was rusty and old. We tried to force it and found it didn’t budge. Back another, the same.

We would get no further tonight and headed back to where we had come it. The first of us went up and tried to pop the hatch. It didn’t move. Second try. Not an inch. Attempt with a tripod? The legs simply slip. It took an interesting rig of slings to allow one of us to hang from the ladder to be able to apply the amount of force required to budge the gate but it lifted and we stepped back onto the street, looking undoubtably odd appearing form the pavement in waders, or me in waterproof trousers taped into wellington boots.

We walked back to the car and called it a night. This is something that will have to be done from the source end towards the end of the stream and not the other way round. Next time…