Coming from the mecca of brick that is London, Stockholm was a bit of a shock. Out of the entire network something like 0.2% is brick. Now this may sound a bit disappointing, in a way it was, but Stockholm had its own charm in the form of rock blasted tunnels! However, have fun finding them!. Due to certain legislation passed by the government, none of the drains are not allowed to discharge into the river under any circumstance, which means no outfalls! At all.

In London, thanks to Bazalgette and the LCC’s burial of its rivers and streams, culverts are a rarity and few have escaped integration into the cities sewer system. The Beverley Brook Storm Relief Culvert, aka ‘Little Boys’ is a short 8ft diversion horseshoe culvert constructed in 1925 after repeat flooding to the Barnes and Putney area.

Zero had an eye on this one for a while. The Greenwich Relief. Having gotten a few possible lids in the can, he and i set out popping. We found the right one second time round, but to our dismay the lid had a tidal flap beneath it. not surprising given it was situated barely 100m from the Thames.

When you think of storm reliefs, you usually think dry, clean, hospitable spaces, at least we do. Its always important to check exactly what type of tunnel your about to instigate adventure into, a storm relief and a storm relief sewer, are very different matters.

London, home to the famous “Lost Rivers”, but one such river you may not have heard about is the River Moselle. Technically the Moselle is not a “Lost River”, small sections still running above-ground through parks and cemeteries.

Moonwalker was very different to the drains so far. It was half concrete and half brick and very very tall. As we approached we could hear a rushing sound which got louder as we grew near. We eventually came to a massive slide leading down to the pipe of doom, the door above was huge and you knew it wasn’t worth the risk going down the pipe just in case it closed behind you. We headed upstream and the debris that we saw was just crazy. Massive sections of walls the size of half a car and huge trees lay in our path. I couldn’t imagine the force of the water that brought that down here and didn’t want to!