Trip 1

This drain is in Richmond Park, and was brought to the attention of the crew by Citizen-X. It’s right up to the river at a shallow section, and the entrance is constructed of standard round concrete sections. Ceiling height is roughly 5ft for the round section. Anyway, it was Boner, Flea, Citizen-X and myself. Boner elected to stay topside however, while the three of us explored the drain. Going in to the drain, there’s a strong smell of the river, which decreases with distance. The walls are smooth, standard RCP and there is perhaps 2inches of water on the floor. Walls are clean and mostly dry, with no dripping. Now we progressed without event through the first, I’ll say, 20metres of the tunnel. At this point “The Hallway” begins. “The Hallway” is a rather short (about 10m in length) section of square concrete duct-type tunnel at the same height as the RCP. However, water becomes a problem here as the floor is strewn with rocks of various sizes and about a foot of water between them. Only Citizen-X was foolish enough to cross this section without boots. At the end is a small section of original brick tunnel, which is totally caked with yellow slime, floor, walls, and ceiling. After that is a small round entrance to a large catch basin (also original brick) for the grating in the street. It is here that we turned back for lack of boots.

Trip 2

This time it was just Citizen-X, Jerry and myself.... the two of them went past "The Hallway" for quite a long distance, but I didn't, since I was just in running shoes again. I don't much like this drain anyway, not only is it a backbreaker, but on the way in I managed to submerge my entire left foot in a pool of stagnant river water at the tunnel's mouth. Anyway, they went in quite a ways and saw some cool mold and fungus and things like that (pics are on the way) while I waited back at "The Hallway". When they finally came back, we left the tunnel the same way we came in, as none of us had anything with which to pry a manhole open. All in all, it turned out to be an interesting, but goddamn backbreaking tunnel for the length that we've explored. Anyway, on the way out, I noticed a dude sitting across the river from us, right in front of the Labatt Brewery; but nobody gave it much thought as he didn't appear to be watching us. However, on the way across the bridge after, I looked over and noticed he had gotten another dude in a Labatt's uniform from the brewery down there and they were both talking excitedly and pointing at us, then at the drain, and then back at us again. At this point we decided we really should leave, so we took off down a side path to escape the minions of The Man (aka Labatt's).

- Capone

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