I've been looking forward to checking out the 'Draining capital of the North', and haven't been disappointed! I headed up to Bradford and met up with toothdoctor. After the usual walk of strange looks we dropped down and made our way to Rainbow junction:

We selected Bypass, a short water slide greeted us almost straight away and hinted this was going to be good. The box section soon opened up into a beast of a 12 ft RCP, Before long a large shaft rose above the pipe.

It took about 20mins to walk from the shaft to the base of the next feature, along the way a couple of access shafts rose a long way up to the surface.

After a while the pipe opened up into another longer water slide. At the top was a junction, with upstream Macro to the right and Pandora's down concrete box to the left.

Taking the left route came to another junction, with Pandora's slot to the left and CSO on the right.

The slot chamber is a more recent addition over an old stone brook, at normal levels the flow goes under the slot and back into the original tunnel. This goes on to join Macro. In a storm the flow overflows the channel and goes into Bypass.

Taking the other route at the junction is the Pandora's CSO chamber. Upon entering the sewer ran overhead, ladders went up either side giving access to processor and observation levels . The chamber had everything, cameras, lights, old airhorn, nice! But the bitter twang of fresh could be tasted in every breath and visibility was not good!

Back down to the slide junction and across a deeper pit leads to the overflow point for Macro.

Getting over here was best not done in thigh waders, you can actually see the event horizon where the water flowed in!

On the other slide is the junction where storm flow is sent down Bypass, normally the flow goes under a slot, crosses unseen over the top of the Bypass waterslide and onto Macros original course.

Upstream from here the tunnels splits into box sections and a large CSO outfall joins.

We turned back shortly after this point as nothing seemed to be going on and wanted to have a look downstream of rainbow junction, it was a long walk back, I checked with gps when in the open and we were on the other side of the city center than what we started, this system is seriously big.

A further trip with TheVicar gave the chance to retake some old shots and further explore upstream Macro. Despite reaching the Cathedral chamber we were both knackered so I didn't take any shots. I'm sure I'll return in another year or so to complete Macro, Bradford has much to offer.