Supersoaker

London once more, its been a while since ive had a decent drain explore here. Having recently visited the big smoke to try out new leads which all proved to be something already explored or far far to deep to get anywhere. So today plans where made to visit Stoop's Limit drain and the upper parts of the Fleet. Both of which were instantly pushed back once more and off we ventured to Supersoaker, AKA the Regents Street Sewer.

Now anybody who has been to London knows that Regents street and streets below are amazingly busy and some sections rate as the busiest in London. All of which makes finding and gaining access a tad tricky. Undeterred we eventually found a quiet road which became our ticket down. We kitted up and headed off.

After several flights of stairs we came to the bottom a tiny sewer at stooping height. As this was a side pipe and not the main tunnel we put our money on it being bigger when it joined the main section and braved the backbreaking walk. All was going according to plan, we were now able to stand up due to a few more mini sewers joining and we were making good progress until we came to what can only be described as a wall of water.

Three small pipes where discharging their content a few meters up which once collided spread out to create the waterfall. Hmm. We had only just started and i didn't feel like getting wet, but, on the other hand this was probably the only sensible manhole we could find. We sized up our options and decided why not lets go!.

I went first got a steady footing and made a break for it. While i was under the water for less then a second i instantly felt the cold chill of wet on my back and my bag was drenched!. Loops looked at me clearly seeing that this was crazy. But i was wet already and i was going to maker damn sure he came through too!. Once through we continued along the pipe having to pass another three waterfalls, luckily none where as big as the first one.

We eventually came to the main junction another sewer joined to the east combining into a round 8ft yellow brick pipe and too the north was a large entrance chamber identical to the grand shaft in dover. We stood up with relief our backs thanking us loudly.

We set off down a rather uneventful pipe, with a few large entrance chambers lined with stone and a few side tunnels along the way. One thing i did notice was this tunnel was unbelievably bendy. Even through it runs down one road it changed direction every 10 meters as if slaloming round something.

In the distance we could hear a heavy rushing sound, which judging by how far we had traveled, we presumed to be the northern interceptor. The pipe shrunk to 7ft and diverted downwards in a s bend slope. The speed at which the water cascaded down was incredible but very shallow so we pushed on, once more getting very wet, only to find the pipe was heavily backlogged due to silt probably caused by a diverting wall stopping normal flow heading further down the pipe and into the interceptor. Damn! after all we've done to get here we couldn't continue. I tried my luck but it was no good i managed only 5 meter before i was 3 ft in silt and my head was close to the water.

We eventually gave up and headed back to our entrance, taking a few photos and renewing that wet feeling which i had only just gotten rid of. We only explored probably 25-30% of the drain but we told ourselves we would return to find a way into the downstream sections, but this wasn't the way.