Exploring beneath Bristol streets

The darkness is so thick it feels like a blanket. As we turn off all of our torches and fall silent, there is an overwhelming sense of nothingness. You’d never guess we were so close to Bristol’s city centre. 

The only sound is the gentle ripple of the water and an occasional oar scraping against the side of the grimy brick walls around us. Explorers Connect have taken a group of adventurers canoeing under the city, to where the River Frome has been diverted multiple times, creating a complex and little-explored cross-section of waterways.

The underground steps, alleys and rusting manholes off to every side suggest we only explore a fraction of what is underneath Bristol, and that sense of the unfamiliar and unknown is what drives this little adventure.

Four people make up a team with two canoes tied together. One canoe takes charge of steering and rowing on the left, and one canoe is in charge of the right. Everyone is of different abilities and super-human strength isn’t necessary, though largely the group is made up of adults who take their sport – be it climbing, mountain biking or deep sea diving – pretty seriously, with one couple currently in training to row across the Atlantic next year.

The route starts off above ground by the Cumberland Basin. Paddling up past the ss Great Britain, and Mshed, we turn off the beaten track as we approach Castle Park. What looks like an overgrown dead end reveals itself to be- after a bit of bashing through branches- the entrance to enormous brick chambers. Above ground the trip is fun and fairly peaceful, but this ominous entrance is where we start feeling like Indiana Jones.

The caves become so thin, the boats will only move by the oars being pushed against the walls as there’s no space for paddles to flow through the water. Cobwebs and stalactites hang near our heads as the ceilings get lower and the space more constricted.

We reach an underground crossroad, where we have the option of turning back, heading up some stairs, “to just by Harvey Nics”, or wading through the water further in. We jump out of the canoes and head into the darkness.

Dim headtorches bounce beams of light around the slimy underground tunnel. Knee deep in the icy water, with rusting iron, silt and mud beneath our feet, it feels like a scene from a horror film, the last of civilisation escaping the spread of a violent disease in the outside world. It’s not hard to imagine gas masked scientists emerging or poisonous eels lapping around our feet.

Despite the traits of horror movies, there’s an incredible sense of peace. It’s such an alien surrounding, all senses are out of place. The lack of city sounds amplifies the whoosh of the water and the echoes of the caves.

As we wade back through the water, legs numbing and eyes adjusted to the darkness, Belinda Kirk, the founder of Explorers Connect and part of the first all-women crew to row unaided around the coast of Britain, is passionate about giving people the opportunity to take small steps to discover and see more.

Exploration can be intimidating, Belinda explains. “Adventure gives you something our risk averse culture doesn’t,” she says.

Though underground tunnels may not seem the biggest adventure in the world, short trips like this push participants to experience something different, and to quite literally take a leap into the unknown.

We emerge into dim daylight at one end of a tunnel by Staples on the M32, the sun bouncing off the water that splashes around our now rather cold feet. The unreality of what we’ve spent the past few hours doing hits us, the empty caves on one side and the busy motorway on the other an almost comic juxtaposition. Passers-by give us odd looks. Someone points out a sign above us on the outside of the tunnel.

“Danger: do not enter this tunnel. Trip and slip hazards and rising water levels.”

“Back in we go, then.”

Beer bottles and candles suggest we’re not the first to be exploring these caves, but it’s easy to forget that and get caught up in the sense of adventure. We are explorers, discovering a new way of seeing our own city. Pushing ourselves back through the tunnel, crashing into the old walls and columns and trying to avoid disturbing the spiders, we have a gained new knowledge of what’s beneath our feet.

The sun has completely set as we emerge back by Castle Park. Bristol’s lights twinkle on the water. We paddle back to our starting point, and even in the darkness, the city looks brand new.

Look for more adventures by visiting www.explorersconnect.com/what-we-do/

Read more: Following the Frome