For the past four or five years, the London Power Tunnels have had a site at the corner of our road. Obviously it is a building site, but we have been able to see, through the various spy-holes, the tunnel boring machines being lowered in and, indeed, returned to the surface again. There was, at one time, a conveyor belt to take the spoil somewhere, and so on. Now the site has got a lot quieter, and the Swan Whisperer decided he wanted to see more of it, so he cheekily asked if he could see in the tunnels.
The answer was no, as you have to have special training to go down, but he was offered a site visit, and today he and I, and J from flat 14, all went round. We were made very welcome. The first thing, we were taken into their offices - a rented, serviced office from the company next door which is storage and offices (they do have office space on site, but not enough) - and given a briefing on what the London Power Tunnels are all about. Very much along the lines of this article from the National Grid, which explains about "our" site in particular, but you can link to an overview of the whole project in general.
After a fairly extensive briefing, we were given PPE - boots, helmets, goggles, reflective jackets and gloves
- and taken on to the site itself. The tunnels are now finished, and we were able to look down them if we wanted to (no thank you! I have no head for heights!), and we could see various machines, including a tall blue tower
that is used to lift the cable drums so that the cables can be unwound and fed down the tunnels - they are planning to start that within the next few days, I believe. The men were incredibly patient, answering all our "What's that for?" questions. There is a lift that goes down to the tunnel floor at the moment, but when all is finished, there will just be stairs. One of the men said he used the stairs on principle, but it made his thighs hurt! You can see a bit of what it must be like from the videos I will link to at the end of this post.
Finally we were taken up to the top of their pre-fab offices, where they have a roof garden where people can smoke if they wish, and eat their picnic lunches, which had a terrific view over the site, and also over London.
They had said we were welcome to take photos, but not to post them on social media, so the ones I'm posting here are those nobody could object to!
It was fascinating, but, alas, reality called, as I had to go to the dentist!
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