Devils Devotion.
It funny how 'fortune' goes.
Last week i was living, for the 6th week, on barely £2.50 a day. I had a £250 overdraught on my UK account, a $550 debt on my Aussie credit card and a $480 overdraught on my Aussie savings account. Then, the Australian Govt, with their $900 'credit crunch tax incentive', paid off my credit card and most of the overdraught, while the UK govt, paying out six weeks backdated housing benefit, put my UK account from £250 in overdraught to £250 in credit. Wonderful!
Then last night, on my way home i found YET ANOTHER £20 note lying in the street!
Im not rich, no, not by a long shot, but i guess im being paid for my humble staying power amidst abject, economically induced poverty and i think the streets of London themselves are paying me for all the loving devotion ive showed them over the last five months. If climbing down manhole shafts could be considered a type of 'penetration', then indeed, im being paid for being a male whore to Lady London herself! :D
On to Budapest tho, in the meantime....
This drain is one of the first things a drain explorer will likely see upon arriving in central Budapest. It sits just upstream of the Elizabeth Bridge on the Buda side of the Danube. Id been in Budapest 15 minutes before i spotted it. Heading across the river, i climbed down the embankment and straight away the Sewerfresh smell hit me.
If you can imagine a tunnel the size of The River Fleet, except unintercepted and with no outfall flap, dumping its entire contents, 99% or which is raw sewage into the Thames, under say... Tower bridge? Then you would have a UK equivalent to what is here in Budapest, dumping its entire sewage laden contents into the not-so-blue Danube, beneath the Elizabeth bridge.
Despite the two metre wide torrent skid marking from the outfall into the river, the tunnel is so wide and big that i was able to walk almost 200m into it, wearing normal shoes. Without proper gear, and having just gotten off a 13 hour train trip from Romania, i headed out n back to my hostel, aiming to tackle it the next day.
Arriving back at 11pm the following day, fresh off the buzz of finding 5 more drains earlier on in the afternoon, i headed up The Devils Ditch, as id discovered it was called, full of enthusiasm.
This ended up being very, very short lived lol. After 250m, the arched concrete tunnel rounded a bend and hit a small weir. Beyond this the tunnel was knee deep, wall to wall. A festering sludgepit. This proved not too bad and i passed a bricked off side tunnel, stopping for a photo as the side section, which was spouting steaming hot water from a tiny pipe provided a good place to hide my fluro.
Sloshing onwards i marvelled at the size of this brick built behemoth. It was to be the last time on this trip that i marvelled at anything other than the fact i was able to stay upright.
The floor rose slightly and the still water was left behind, replaced by a two metre wide flow, very fast, very slippery and potholed to buggery, impossible to walk through with the waders i had on. But there was plenty of room on the mildly sloped sides... except they were so fucking slippery i couldnt walk faster than a cripple and was sliding all over the place, taking chunks out of my hand as i bashed it against rough walls in my flailing attempts to stay on my feet.
The tunnel didnt change much. Many side tunnels were blocked off, making me wonder where all the flow was coming from. It took an hour of slow difficult walking before i finally gave up. The huge tunnel never seemed to end and with bleeding knuckles n sore legs, i turned back, cursing my lack of studded waders.
Emerging 40 minutes later was a relief... i de-wadered and shook my head in bewilderment at the 20 or so fisherman pulling fish out of the river in the turdstream down from the outfall.
I wrote the drain off till the next day, whereby i discovered, having translated a Hungarian Wikipedia entry that the tunnel indeed had an inlet, 5km up in the hills.
Its history was quite interesting. The Ditch had originally been vaulted over in the 1600's, houses placed above it. In 1870, the bulk of the large brick tunnel was built, then two years later a massive flood washed through it, causing the 1600 built vault sections to collapse, houses and all.
In 1945, the Germans tried to blast through the wall of the tunnel in an attempt to reach a well fortified allied bunker. the effort was sa failure.
While the Pest side of the river is properly intercepted for sewage, of the 600'000 cubic metres of sewage produced by the Buda side, 50'000 cubic metres flows out of the tunnel every day. Im not sure, but while i was there the embankment of the river was being dug up and 6ft pipes laid, possibly an attempt at interception:
Anyway's, i took a walk up to the inlet and jumped in. The creek, which was bone dry and overgrown with long grass drops into a shallow pit and doesnt look like it had seen fresh water in years.
20m in, a 5ft diameter plastic pipe dumps in the bulk of the tunnels sewage. From here its a slow, slippery walk through a concreted over brick arch tunnel thats about 8-9ft high, but far easier to walk through than the larger downstream tunnel. About a kilometre in i encountered a 10ft high waterfall. I could've climbed down it, maybe, as it had large formations growing out of its side, but as i was alone, i gave it a miss. Heading back out, relived once more to be on steady, grippy ground.
Last week i was living, for the 6th week, on barely £2.50 a day. I had a £250 overdraught on my UK account, a $550 debt on my Aussie credit card and a $480 overdraught on my Aussie savings account. Then, the Australian Govt, with their $900 'credit crunch tax incentive', paid off my credit card and most of the overdraught, while the UK govt, paying out six weeks backdated housing benefit, put my UK account from £250 in overdraught to £250 in credit. Wonderful!
Then last night, on my way home i found YET ANOTHER £20 note lying in the street!
Im not rich, no, not by a long shot, but i guess im being paid for my humble staying power amidst abject, economically induced poverty and i think the streets of London themselves are paying me for all the loving devotion ive showed them over the last five months. If climbing down manhole shafts could be considered a type of 'penetration', then indeed, im being paid for being a male whore to Lady London herself! :D
On to Budapest tho, in the meantime....
This drain is one of the first things a drain explorer will likely see upon arriving in central Budapest. It sits just upstream of the Elizabeth Bridge on the Buda side of the Danube. Id been in Budapest 15 minutes before i spotted it. Heading across the river, i climbed down the embankment and straight away the Sewerfresh smell hit me.
If you can imagine a tunnel the size of The River Fleet, except unintercepted and with no outfall flap, dumping its entire contents, 99% or which is raw sewage into the Thames, under say... Tower bridge? Then you would have a UK equivalent to what is here in Budapest, dumping its entire sewage laden contents into the not-so-blue Danube, beneath the Elizabeth bridge.
Despite the two metre wide torrent skid marking from the outfall into the river, the tunnel is so wide and big that i was able to walk almost 200m into it, wearing normal shoes. Without proper gear, and having just gotten off a 13 hour train trip from Romania, i headed out n back to my hostel, aiming to tackle it the next day.
Arriving back at 11pm the following day, fresh off the buzz of finding 5 more drains earlier on in the afternoon, i headed up The Devils Ditch, as id discovered it was called, full of enthusiasm.
This ended up being very, very short lived lol. After 250m, the arched concrete tunnel rounded a bend and hit a small weir. Beyond this the tunnel was knee deep, wall to wall. A festering sludgepit. This proved not too bad and i passed a bricked off side tunnel, stopping for a photo as the side section, which was spouting steaming hot water from a tiny pipe provided a good place to hide my fluro.
Sloshing onwards i marvelled at the size of this brick built behemoth. It was to be the last time on this trip that i marvelled at anything other than the fact i was able to stay upright.
The floor rose slightly and the still water was left behind, replaced by a two metre wide flow, very fast, very slippery and potholed to buggery, impossible to walk through with the waders i had on. But there was plenty of room on the mildly sloped sides... except they were so fucking slippery i couldnt walk faster than a cripple and was sliding all over the place, taking chunks out of my hand as i bashed it against rough walls in my flailing attempts to stay on my feet.
The tunnel didnt change much. Many side tunnels were blocked off, making me wonder where all the flow was coming from. It took an hour of slow difficult walking before i finally gave up. The huge tunnel never seemed to end and with bleeding knuckles n sore legs, i turned back, cursing my lack of studded waders.
Emerging 40 minutes later was a relief... i de-wadered and shook my head in bewilderment at the 20 or so fisherman pulling fish out of the river in the turdstream down from the outfall.
I wrote the drain off till the next day, whereby i discovered, having translated a Hungarian Wikipedia entry that the tunnel indeed had an inlet, 5km up in the hills.
Its history was quite interesting. The Ditch had originally been vaulted over in the 1600's, houses placed above it. In 1870, the bulk of the large brick tunnel was built, then two years later a massive flood washed through it, causing the 1600 built vault sections to collapse, houses and all.
In 1945, the Germans tried to blast through the wall of the tunnel in an attempt to reach a well fortified allied bunker. the effort was sa failure.
While the Pest side of the river is properly intercepted for sewage, of the 600'000 cubic metres of sewage produced by the Buda side, 50'000 cubic metres flows out of the tunnel every day. Im not sure, but while i was there the embankment of the river was being dug up and 6ft pipes laid, possibly an attempt at interception:
Anyway's, i took a walk up to the inlet and jumped in. The creek, which was bone dry and overgrown with long grass drops into a shallow pit and doesnt look like it had seen fresh water in years.
20m in, a 5ft diameter plastic pipe dumps in the bulk of the tunnels sewage. From here its a slow, slippery walk through a concreted over brick arch tunnel thats about 8-9ft high, but far easier to walk through than the larger downstream tunnel. About a kilometre in i encountered a 10ft high waterfall. I could've climbed down it, maybe, as it had large formations growing out of its side, but as i was alone, i gave it a miss. Heading back out, relived once more to be on steady, grippy ground.