As we pulled up to “The works” we had a lot of nosey locals staring at us all simultaneously reaching for their phones. Now our entrance was on the other side of the river which we made a complete meal getting over it either being stopped by deep water of walls to high. It took us almost 30 minutes to get over. But we eventually made it to the grassy outfall of the works.

We headed on in and after a small brick up junction we came to the monster stairs. Now being in chest waders this was going to be a bit of a mission as i couldn’t lift my legs high enough to climb the steps. I had to practically jump up them and at the top lay the giant works chamber in which “inhospitable” runs through.

We decided we would explore first and take photographs later so we descended into “inhospitable” and headed north towards “processor”. Within 5 minutes it was clear why this drain was called inhospitable, because it really was the amount of debris that lurked beneath the water made progress painful and slow. Constantly slipping and stumbling over the fallen rocks was a pain in the ass to say the least. We eventually emerged back into the outfall and after a quick phone call to JD to confirm some details we headed further and into the outfall of “processor”.

I really should have taken some pictures of the pipes hear. A beautiful red brick covered in what looked like lime when you shone you torch down the tunnel glowed with a greenish tint. We headed on and eventually came to a side passage leading into the processor chamber with the weirdest overflown/debris removal machine housed in the middle. We progressed a little further up the pipe before heading back due to sadly not have enough time to explore the rest as we had to photograph “the works”.

We headed back into the works down to the main chamber and started to snap away. As i finished a little earlier then the rest myself and loops headed down the uber stairs to take pics of the crusty pipe, and afterwards the outfall.

I have to say i was enjoying the whole northern drain scene as it was nothing like the south. In a way it was better as you didn’t have to mess around with manhole covers, barriers or small access pipes it was a walk in situation. As we sat in the outfall discussing the day we looked out at the river it was so peaceful and relaxing watching the cold steam rise from the water i felt i could sit here all night.