After the visit to Bewl Water's Overfloew, myself and Snappel headed to another in Ardingly. While not as deep as Bewl's it had a horseshoe different design, and was much closer to the waters edge. A small bridge connecting the bank to the overflow tower.

Unlike the easy and dry outfall at bewl, this one wasn't. A large sump sat at the entrance to the tunnel, supposedly to stop the flow of water instantly rushing into the rover. Unfortunately this meant we couldn't just waltz up to the entrance like last time. There were no ladders or stairs on the dry side, and with such high walls we had no obvious way down.

Just as were about to give up when Snappel joked "I have some climbing rope in the car". We looked at each other, then at the drop, and smiled. We headed back to the car acquired the rope, tying it into a make-shift loop ladder. We anchored the rope to a nearby fence, which like most things we do, seemed like a good idea at the time. I drew the short straw, or piece of grass, and became the guinea pig for the ladder.

Ill admit i was a little nervous. The more weight i put on the rope, the looser the rope felt. Slowly stretching too far for me to turn back. I was left hanging in the air, trying pathetically to fit my feet in the damn loops while stopping myself spinning round with my hands. Eventually i reached the bottom and Snappel soon followed.

We headed off into the pipe and within five minutes we came to our first "little" problem. Where the pipe wasn't completely level, water has pooled in a 10-20 meter section, and we were in trainers!. It didn't look too deep at first, and we thought, hell weve come this far, so why not?. But just to be sure, sock off. We took our first steps into the water and after two meters the water level suddenly dropped to a foot deep. Splash, wet shoes!, "my god its cold, RUN ". We splashed through the water like holiday makers on Brighton beach, and came out the other side, soaked. As i poked my shoes, small jets of water streamed from the holes. Yep, wet.

We pushed on, eventually coming to the overflow and the source of all the water. A small side pipe was gushing out water like nobodies business!. I knew this overflow wasn't the biggest in the world, but it seemed only a few meters deep. You could see right up into the tower above.

Once more we donned the photographic practices then headed back out. The water again filling our shoes and seemed to be alot colder then before. Like Tarzan, Snappel had no problem climbing back up. Pausing to beat his chest, demonstrate his authority on the rope. Ok, maybe not. The rope climb was alot harder going back up. As I'm not the fittest person in the world, hauling the body weight of a chronic couch potato was something my legs just didnt want to do.

All in all a good little side mission and hopefully well be doing more soon. Ladybower you say?, you must be crazy!.