Big Butts (talk about mudflaps...) - July 08

Clocked by Bungle a couple of weeks ago this culvert of the River Roch looked well worthy of investigation. Sadly from Bungle's recce pics the water looked pretty deep, the reality was, after a couple of days of dry weather it was an easy walk into a massive pillared chamber.

The culvert is actually made up of seven bridges spanning the Roch under Rochdale town centre, seven bridges that over the years have been connected and covered, making it one of the widest bridges in the world, cool, eh? And you thought Rochdale was only famous for the 'Gracie Fields lived here carwash'!!

From the infall we were both feeling this one, an inverted egg shaped sidepipe on the left leads to a sewer overflow processor, almost as soon as you walk in, the familiar whiff of something shitty greets the unsuspecting nostril (of nosey fame).


Carrying on further the huge tunnel splits into two, then three seperate tunnels before returning to two. More sidepipes leading god knows where await the busy explorer, before the tunnels once again rejoin into another huge pillared chamber leading to the outfall somewhere near the Police Station.

While this drain isn't spectacularly long the features and different constructions are cool as fook, I can see myself revisiting this one sometime soon...Damn Manchester, your drains are keeping me busy...

The name btw comes from the area outside the town hall, known locally as The Butts, nothing to do with Bungle's arse, nor mine.

TnM :->

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