As i live in London, bad weather comes with the territory. But eventually, after the twelfth consecutive day of rain, you just give up. Resorting to other forms of troll like entertainment, computers perhaps?. Thankfully the British weather is bound to run out of steam at some point, and that's when you strike. With the sun in the sky, i met up with new guy loops and we ventured forth, waders at the ready.

Today's objective was the "Bermondsey Storm Relief Sewer". This relief attains the flow from the Southwark and london bridge sewers during floods and sends them off to Depford.

With the fresh and fragrant feel of rubber against my legs, and bright yellow marigolds on my hands, we popped the manhole and climbed down. We were greeted by the worst smell in draining history. Not even the mighty cess pit known as Serpents Lair could compete with this. To give you a rough idea. Imagine if u picked up a week old piece of road kill, and surgically placed it in a blender. Adding pickings of vomit, grease, fat, urine and detergent. Oh not forgetting the cherry on this scrumptious cake, turd. Whisk it up and leave it in the hot sun for a few days, it would probably smell like that. Yum!.

Touch down, or at least i thought it was. My foot slowly sank into the bubbling soup beneath, and kept going and going. I held on to the ladder for dear life, just how bloody deep was this?!. With the next ladder only four meters away we decided to make a run for it. Or at least try anyway. I summoned my mad Jesus skills, and gracefully skipped over the sludge. That's my story, and were sticking to it. The next ladder was just as bad. Totally undistinguishable from the fudge underfoot, you had to kick your own foot holes in to climb down.

We were now in a split black and red brick pipe, roughly 4-5ft in diameter. I.e. a "back killer". Technically we were still in the Southwark Relief, with the main Bermondsey line flowing to the south. So that's the direction we headed. Corner after corner we marched through the silent abyss. Nothing changing, same tunnel, same height, same amount of back pain, until finally we reached the mainline. The pipe curved outwards to a respectable 8-9ft, with another smaller 5ft pipe flowing in from the east. I clicked my back and sighed with relief,"no pun intended". Bermondsey relief was a go!,

We decided to adhere to the walk now photo later policy, so we headed off down the main pipe. We passed several sanitary sewers, which intersected the pipe in their own overflow chambers. Constructed in a oval form. Should the flow overflow it would cascade over a small barrier and down a slide into the main tunnel.

As we progressed, we noticed the tide mark along the wall. A good 2ft higher than our head height, not good. We kept walking on as the water level slowly started to rise. Eventually, due to holes attained in Paris we had to turn back. A low rumble of the beasts lair could be heard in the distance. It was mocking us, but there was nothing we could do. We sheathed our swords and retreated back to the surface. For now our quest was on hold. We needed to level up with more EXP, and our equipment was shoddy.

We vowed to return. Better equipped, stronger, and more informed. Accompanied by the most seasoned band of warriors that Bermondsey had ever seen.