Visited with my Nan.
Although directly 30 mins on the train from my home town of Basingstoke, it took us about 5 AND A HALF HOURS to get there. I don't know if we got the wrong train or missed the stop but somehow we ended up in Botley. The next train from Botley to Southampton was in an hour and after speaking to 2 other kids in a similar predicament, found out the next train to Botley had broken down and the line would reopen in another 3 hours! Spent about an hour there contemplating what the actual hell we were doing before getting a bus from Botley to Southampton. We were so fed up at that point we were just going to go straight back to Basingstoke, but as the train we got on to B'stoke also stopped at the culvert, we decided to just visit the bloody thing and get it out of the way!
Finding the culvert was pretty easy but the first time I visited it in October 2024, I got lost fighting my way through chest high brambles and nettles for around an hour or two. There seems to be a pattern emerging here.
But oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained.
Nothing in the way of features at all, just double prefab concrete box culverts which run for about 130m under Stoneham Interchange and the M27. I have never heard an echo better, I'm guessing due to the smooth concrete walls and the size of it makes the echo reverb like mad!
The watercourse seems to favour the left side tunnel as it had all the flow. The right side tunnel was filled with compacted mud / silt for its entire length which probably gets deposited in times of flood, but it was sinky in places so I mainly stuck to the left side tunnel.
The culvert was huge! About 4m in height from invert to crown and 6m in width.
For some reason there were a bunch of trolleys in there. I counted about four and most seemed to be from Asda.
HELP.
Traversing this bit was quite tricky due to the submerged debris and sinking sand.
At the outfall. (Try and spot granny in the background lol)
This is in the right side culvert. I have no clue why anyone would put this in there, there was another one for The Flash next to it.
Both culverts show a watermark about 2m above the invert level. The Monks Brook is majorly incorporated into the surface water drainage system upstream in Eastleigh and Chandler's Ford so I guess that explains it.
Just a quick one thrown in between the longer and more featureful drains, wasn't really worth the effort to get to but easy to do and messing about with the insane echo in there ate up a few minutes. Thanks for looking.
Although directly 30 mins on the train from my home town of Basingstoke, it took us about 5 AND A HALF HOURS to get there. I don't know if we got the wrong train or missed the stop but somehow we ended up in Botley. The next train from Botley to Southampton was in an hour and after speaking to 2 other kids in a similar predicament, found out the next train to Botley had broken down and the line would reopen in another 3 hours! Spent about an hour there contemplating what the actual hell we were doing before getting a bus from Botley to Southampton. We were so fed up at that point we were just going to go straight back to Basingstoke, but as the train we got on to B'stoke also stopped at the culvert, we decided to just visit the bloody thing and get it out of the way!
Finding the culvert was pretty easy but the first time I visited it in October 2024, I got lost fighting my way through chest high brambles and nettles for around an hour or two. There seems to be a pattern emerging here.
But oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained.Nothing in the way of features at all, just double prefab concrete box culverts which run for about 130m under Stoneham Interchange and the M27. I have never heard an echo better, I'm guessing due to the smooth concrete walls and the size of it makes the echo reverb like mad!
The watercourse seems to favour the left side tunnel as it had all the flow. The right side tunnel was filled with compacted mud / silt for its entire length which probably gets deposited in times of flood, but it was sinky in places so I mainly stuck to the left side tunnel.
The culvert was huge! About 4m in height from invert to crown and 6m in width.
For some reason there were a bunch of trolleys in there. I counted about four and most seemed to be from Asda.
HELP.
Traversing this bit was quite tricky due to the submerged debris and sinking sand.
At the outfall. (Try and spot granny in the background lol)
This is in the right side culvert. I have no clue why anyone would put this in there, there was another one for The Flash next to it.
Both culverts show a watermark about 2m above the invert level. The Monks Brook is majorly incorporated into the surface water drainage system upstream in Eastleigh and Chandler's Ford so I guess that explains it.
Just a quick one thrown in between the longer and more featureful drains, wasn't really worth the effort to get to but easy to do and messing about with the insane echo in there ate up a few minutes. Thanks for looking.
