A concrete monster that acts as the surface water run-off for Manchester airport's runways and the M56 motorway. This was my first drain in a while having been put off by poor weather conditions, life in general and a host of other trivialities, it felt good to be climbing down a manhole accessed ladder again.
Romanian1 first pointed me in the direction of this a few months ago and one evening a while back the two of us headed in, sadly, on that occasion, neither of us could actually be arsed taking pictures of what is essentially Bunker without the interesting bits.
But I wasn't gonna give up on it. So SparkUK and I had another crack more recently, determined to see more of this underground mistress of mither. RCP is DULL. Straight as a die RCP is DULL.
But we went on, maybe a mile or more, the flow of water was but a few inches, at least on the way upstream it was a few inches. This drain is puncuated along the way by vertical downpipes, of unknown origin or influx, some of them steadily drip away as if a gentle shower above is feeding them, others are starkly silent and dry.
One of them, however, constantly dribbles over the edge of a sump, nothing too serious or worrysome, until it REALLY lets go. And that's what it did. In spectacular fashion. Spark and I had been upstream casually making smalltalk about the chance of being attacked by velociraptors or giant man eating mushrooms, barely paying attention to the noise of rushing water as we headed downstream.
The first sight of an overflowing sump is scary, water was pouring into the drain at an astonishing rate, the problem with this drain however, is the fact that the nearest manhole will land you airside at Manchester Airport, you have a choice, be drowned or be shot. We chose drowning as the death of choice.
What took us 40 or 50 minutes to traverse upstream took us 20 to get down, all the while we expected a tsunami of water to wash us away, fortunately it didn't happen, and we were able to get to the outfall and underneath a flow check concrete barrier barely 40inches deep with rising water before making our escape.
I've never had a close call like that before, but it certainly serves as a reminder that drains are not to be fucked about with.
M
Romanian1 first pointed me in the direction of this a few months ago and one evening a while back the two of us headed in, sadly, on that occasion, neither of us could actually be arsed taking pictures of what is essentially Bunker without the interesting bits.
But I wasn't gonna give up on it. So SparkUK and I had another crack more recently, determined to see more of this underground mistress of mither. RCP is DULL. Straight as a die RCP is DULL.
But we went on, maybe a mile or more, the flow of water was but a few inches, at least on the way upstream it was a few inches. This drain is puncuated along the way by vertical downpipes, of unknown origin or influx, some of them steadily drip away as if a gentle shower above is feeding them, others are starkly silent and dry.
One of them, however, constantly dribbles over the edge of a sump, nothing too serious or worrysome, until it REALLY lets go. And that's what it did. In spectacular fashion. Spark and I had been upstream casually making smalltalk about the chance of being attacked by velociraptors or giant man eating mushrooms, barely paying attention to the noise of rushing water as we headed downstream.
The first sight of an overflowing sump is scary, water was pouring into the drain at an astonishing rate, the problem with this drain however, is the fact that the nearest manhole will land you airside at Manchester Airport, you have a choice, be drowned or be shot. We chose drowning as the death of choice.
What took us 40 or 50 minutes to traverse upstream took us 20 to get down, all the while we expected a tsunami of water to wash us away, fortunately it didn't happen, and we were able to get to the outfall and underneath a flow check concrete barrier barely 40inches deep with rising water before making our escape.
I've never had a close call like that before, but it certainly serves as a reminder that drains are not to be fucked about with.
M
