I got a message from Goan April last year about Newburn Culvert which had flooded and collapsed some time previous, he linked me up with a recent news report showing how they had restored order, but we're still working on it 24hrs a day.
Heres a picture showing some of the mess the collapsed culvert left behind:
Another example of one news report BBC News - Newburn flood-damaged flats: Culvert investigation begins there's loads of reports if you want to Google further, it was quite a disaster and nightmare for those affected especially as no one would take responsibility for the culvert.
We figured we shouldn't delay and should go visit despite the ongoing works. As we drove into the village there was a guy in his high viz, now high viz is everywhere nowadays so not uncommon to see a dog walker in high viz, we joked "Security are onto us already" then as we got nearer it became clear this was no domestic dog walker but indeed it was Mr security checking his outer perimeter and staring suspiciously at us as we rolled by. The extent of the fenced off area and ongoing works was then realised, this was not a small operation.
So we started far away at the lower most part of the culvert (near where it joins the Tyne). Nice and big with old brickwork (complete with drain football):
The next section had an awkward pass under a road, at the time we were able to skip this as on the other side of the road the culvert previously running over max capacity had lifted the carpark in front off the bike shop. This was now under repair leaving a huge gaping hole. Now it involved a bit of a down climb, I can't remember now but probably 8ft to the surface of the water I could of easily lowered myself down other than I wasn't going to willingly drop myself into water of an unknown depth. Fortunately there was a 3T lifting sling laying around which proved most useful to me. Goan however took a less graceful approach and lost his footing and bellyflopped the 8ft from road level into the drain. He was a good sport, and carried on exploring (safe in the knowledge that I had some dry clothes back at the car for him)
This section of the culvert was the longest lots of brick, no manholes, some repaired sections and some bits still to repair as per the following picture (note this was 2013 I'm sure they've fixed it now), not clear in the picture but amongst other things there was a square metal stake that had been driven into the ground above penetrating the culvert.
Further up things then started getting noisy so we kept going to see what the noise was, we had seen the new huge open shaft on news, really wanted that but knew it might not be viable with all the works. We didn't make it to the shaft but came across this beauty of a waterfall cut out of the natural rock:
We climbed it then after a short distance could see some light (street lights/work lights), so into stealth mode we carefully rounded the corner to see a worker stood in high viz, naturally we turned and bailed.
Following this, wanting to get back and visit the shaft we periodically checked news (I suspect Goan had a Google alert set up as he never missed anything), August last year it had been quiet a while and I was in the area anyway so I swung past to see how they were getting on only to find it all still fenced off with surprisingly active security (I didn't even leave my car and he had snapped a shot of me ha) also still loads of plant equipment so we waited some more. This went on for ages with various debates before knocking down another block. Eventually news reports had died off so figured it was time for a revisit now June 2014, this time with AJ. We went straight for the (now capped) big shaft and hit jackpot straight away.
It's a nice big clean space we hung around here for a while, taking pics and chilling, before heading upstream, a bit stoopy in parts but not as bad as some of the pics make it look) .
Here a 2ft tributary joins, from above ha:
Once we had explored this section of the culvert we headed back downstream to the culvert with the waterfall, then some careful down climbing, set up the camera then back up, then back down etc: worth it though got a better picture this time :
Then finished off with this shot of AJ:
Heres a picture showing some of the mess the collapsed culvert left behind:
Another example of one news report BBC News - Newburn flood-damaged flats: Culvert investigation begins there's loads of reports if you want to Google further, it was quite a disaster and nightmare for those affected especially as no one would take responsibility for the culvert.
We figured we shouldn't delay and should go visit despite the ongoing works. As we drove into the village there was a guy in his high viz, now high viz is everywhere nowadays so not uncommon to see a dog walker in high viz, we joked "Security are onto us already" then as we got nearer it became clear this was no domestic dog walker but indeed it was Mr security checking his outer perimeter and staring suspiciously at us as we rolled by. The extent of the fenced off area and ongoing works was then realised, this was not a small operation.
So we started far away at the lower most part of the culvert (near where it joins the Tyne). Nice and big with old brickwork (complete with drain football):
The next section had an awkward pass under a road, at the time we were able to skip this as on the other side of the road the culvert previously running over max capacity had lifted the carpark in front off the bike shop. This was now under repair leaving a huge gaping hole. Now it involved a bit of a down climb, I can't remember now but probably 8ft to the surface of the water I could of easily lowered myself down other than I wasn't going to willingly drop myself into water of an unknown depth. Fortunately there was a 3T lifting sling laying around which proved most useful to me. Goan however took a less graceful approach and lost his footing and bellyflopped the 8ft from road level into the drain. He was a good sport, and carried on exploring (safe in the knowledge that I had some dry clothes back at the car for him)
This section of the culvert was the longest lots of brick, no manholes, some repaired sections and some bits still to repair as per the following picture (note this was 2013 I'm sure they've fixed it now), not clear in the picture but amongst other things there was a square metal stake that had been driven into the ground above penetrating the culvert.
Further up things then started getting noisy so we kept going to see what the noise was, we had seen the new huge open shaft on news, really wanted that but knew it might not be viable with all the works. We didn't make it to the shaft but came across this beauty of a waterfall cut out of the natural rock:
We climbed it then after a short distance could see some light (street lights/work lights), so into stealth mode we carefully rounded the corner to see a worker stood in high viz, naturally we turned and bailed.
Following this, wanting to get back and visit the shaft we periodically checked news (I suspect Goan had a Google alert set up as he never missed anything), August last year it had been quiet a while and I was in the area anyway so I swung past to see how they were getting on only to find it all still fenced off with surprisingly active security (I didn't even leave my car and he had snapped a shot of me ha) also still loads of plant equipment so we waited some more. This went on for ages with various debates before knocking down another block. Eventually news reports had died off so figured it was time for a revisit now June 2014, this time with AJ. We went straight for the (now capped) big shaft and hit jackpot straight away.
It's a nice big clean space we hung around here for a while, taking pics and chilling, before heading upstream, a bit stoopy in parts but not as bad as some of the pics make it look) .
Here a 2ft tributary joins, from above ha:
Once we had explored this section of the culvert we headed back downstream to the culvert with the waterfall, then some careful down climbing, set up the camera then back up, then back down etc: worth it though got a better picture this time :
Then finished off with this shot of AJ:
