Sewer Freshness…
Metro Madness
Telephone Tunnelage
Ossuary Pits of Fun
Aqueduct Squeeziness
Drain Sloshiness
The initial mission was to assemble a crew of people willing to go further, harder and discover underground paris and naples all on their lesser valued US/canadian and aussie dollars!
Six months of planning, organizing and le French lessons (i.e just add le or la before every second or third word) and the previous crew of Freak (US) Slim Jim (US) & Maze (Canada) were committed for a two or three week onslaught of pure underground, no matter what it encompassed.
As the months proceeded towards the golden time a few more people joined the crew Nel (Canada) Intrepid (UK) Luca (Italy) Guru (Australia) and DC (US) which provided us with not only some french speakers but a sarcastic, shit stirring bunch of mofo ninja’s.
The quarries (our main objective) provide a labyrinth; some 280km’s according to the General Inspection of the Quarries. ***1.
In reality the figure actually revolves around 102.8km (according to ktacops) for the biggest south system known as the GRS.
A brief history of the quarries here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris
The 13th district encompasses 25km alongside the playground of the 14th consisting of 69km of spectacular features from decorated rooms, to sandstone carvings, spiral staircases, manhole shafts that shoot for 30M to bunkers. It is by far the most visited, which is evident upon entering where you just need to ‘look for the trash’ as the locals say.
Finally there remains the smaller segment of the 15th 8.4km’s of tunnels dating back to 1778.
Photo by GURU
We concentrate our efforts on the 14th district after we found the 15th to be sealed off courtesy of the kta cops whom had backfilled and placed concrete in the passage way connection.
Never the less l was glad to have spent sufficient time there last year and so ensued our pursuits towards the other systems of the underground.
We start our adventure on christmas eve with Slim Jim the (ultimate map man) who is on a mission to find an elusive connection between the 14th and the sewers. The quarries range from 30M below rising to about 5M from the surface and with sewers sitting at a range of roughly 5M below we target the northern section where the quarries are the closest to the surface. Slim, Guru and Nivelo scour off the map every tunnel, every nook & cranny and any chatiere (holes dug by cataphiles through the walls to make connections to other tunnel systems) with the aid of much beer and $1euro wine and funky tunes provided by a mp3 player and speaker.
It was an 80’s music night, a good mix to dance to whilst drunk and be out of tune to the drunkedness of the other explorer’s surrounding you.
(yes l did invent a new word there, drunkedness only cause l damn well can!)
We each take a side, left, right and ceiling to concentrate our efforts on and if a chatiere came our way on the designated side we had to climb through it and find any treasure to claim as our own!
We retire that night to diminished hope of finding the connection and spend some time around the fountain before popping a manhole and finding a taxi who didn’t know what he was in for until l was exiting and left a lot of kta dirt as a present to the old chap.
The second night ensues, a quiet night underground; l guess with most people spending time with their families on christmas day, but l think we were all here to celebrate with our adopted family of explorer’s amongst the dirt, dust and atmosphere that the quarries provide. We meet one frenchie Thomas who provide us with some nice hash and some more leads for furthering our quest for the sewers. But alas it was not to be and so we end up exploring some of the rooms we were eager to check out the year and philibert’s tomb before heading out through the P.C a good 60 minute walk to the entrance and another 20 minutes to the hotel only making one fatal mistake of jumping a fence where l rip my jeans wide open and jim cuts his hand on swearing never to take the easy option out again!
The arrival of Luca saw the next night encompassing a trip to the maze of Val De Grace. A labyrinth of rooms mostly standing height but often delving on hands and knees to go further into the area or should l say getting lost! Park benches, tables carved out of the sandstone and the infamous tall archways which are concealed by the chatiere type entrance.
Jim provides some more knowledge and leads us to the oldest archway (circa 1600) in the quarries we believe before wandering to find the white ‘M’s (take note if you are going to VDG!) painted on the wall which lead to our exit.
We sleep into the day and find ourselves swamped with canadians and americans swarming our room (arrrghhh!) Freak, Dc, Maze, Nel & Tijeff have arrived to get our arses into gear.
It was le touristic night encompassing La Plage, the BDM and the city scape room (l forget the name) whilst munching on cheese & crackers to make ourselves fit in with any locals we find ;-p
We spend a good 7 hours underground, Freak gets shitty at french conversation stating ‘l can’t french!’ jim gets intoxicated reminiscing of his homeland ‘l come from the land of corn’ .. yes he does IOWA! and Luca gets it all backwards with ‘fuck the what?’ instead of ‘what the fuck?’.
Guru and Nivelo are suffering from the flu (re-named the aussie flu which ends up infecting about 90% of the crew – goal achieved :-p ) so we leave early only to meet Freak, DC and Luca after a massive divert around some 50cm water without waders. We crawl along the tunnel of backbreaking pain and yes we were warned it would be low for a extended period of time, but why not push our bodies full of alcohol… l mean isn’t the alcohol meant to ensure no pain until later in the morning when that soberness hits?
A couple of nights later we decide to tackle the sewers that we had so much fun in last year.
We made our way through telephone to a hidden connection to the sewer system but this year we were determined to go further and see more of Le Poop and less of the Le Phonage which in comparison was very boring. We headed in through a grill on a side street and made our way via memory to the connection where we popped onto conveniently created Le Poop (yes l just love that phrase) platforms so we were not actually standing in poop although the odd squishy was evident and screams of horror bellowed through the tunnels. Spiral staircases made very exquisite features, side tunnels with stair cases leading to gutter boxes and a Le Poop trolley complete with carnage residing in the middle of the tunnel.
A BIG photo nicked from wikiwikiwikipedia.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 010737.jpg
Trekking further we find ourselves curling around a corner, it’s a miraculous curving poop slide, bigger than the ‘flying crap crawl’ that Minneapolis has to offer. We were getting excited now so we followed to find ourselves in a bigger tunnel, what we thought to be the main trunk line.
Cheers cry out and we watch the river of flowing green or was it brown? river of shittage passing us by. Now you must realize that the Minneapolis people are king of poopage and when they were excited l was too 
We found a mega a river of shit.... oh joy!
Photo by LUCA
We stopped for some photos and tagged up on the side walk before continuing our quest to see what it had to offer. We noticed that certain staircases had numbers 55, 54, 53, 52 and figured we were heading for something big, that or the sewer treatment plant. We continued for a fair while until we ran out of steam and popped a manhole on a quiet side street for a swift exit back to the hotel.
Funnily enough it didn’t smell that much at all, it was just a mild aroma of arse stench and the odd runny shit that got in our way, again cry’s of ‘Le Poop, don’t stand in it’ rang out and the term ‘sewer fresh’ was adopted on our travels.
The next night was the 30th and we had big plans for NYE so we ventured out for a short night of exploration to the cemetery next to the hotel. It was rumored of a ossuary underneath but guards may be patrolling the innards of the cemetery so we proceeded cautiously and discovered the mega heavy manhole to unveil the best untouched collections of bones l have seen to date.
A small tunnel system with pits of skeletons complete with full skulls, something of a rarity through the 14th since people were selling them at markets years ago.
Moving on our plans for NYE were foiled when the cops discovered the plans of the cataphiles to host a party at the Bagneux quarry so a few of us progressed back to the 14th armed with bottles of wine and beer to greet the new year in. Others went to the Eiffel tower to watch the pitiful fireworks. We didn’t quite make it in by midnight so we just celebrated the night with the bones and hung out with some of the french who we stumbled upon, leaving late in the eerrr morning to find ourselves in bed and somehow waking up for a pre-arranged meeting with Gilles at 13:30.
Photo by GURU
Now Gilles is the author of the book ‘Subterranean Paris’ who graciously provided the group with an informational tour of the oldest section of the 14th district. I was lucky enough to meet him last year a couple of times and wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to hear what the master of quarry history had to offer so we popped a manhole at Montparnasse and headed in for a 7 hour exploration uncovering much of the secrets of the underground. Most explorer’s pass through the quarries spotting the writing on the wall but not many realize it’s importance nor it’s history dating back to the creation dates inscribed.
Six ventured, listened, learnt and gazed in the amazing facts as we swiftly moved about listening to the metro above us, viewing the tallest arch before celebrating the first day of the year to a bottle of champaign graciously provided by our host.
We were given a map of an abandoned aqueduct by Gilles nearby so we ventured out for the night to investigate. We find the manhole and swiftly pop it, entering a small 2M tall, 75cm wide sewer which stank!
We follow it for a while to find a T junction, side passages which provided some cool photos and possible further interesting tunnels but we end up bailing because of the smell.
We try another telephone hatch but it was locked so we walked back to the hotel.
Interesting none the less but honestly not my cuppa tea so we leave trying our luck with more telephone system hatches but access was denied! (the hatches are convenient little fuckers too)
Again we meet with Gilles and Julian, a friend with wealth of the metro system of paris. He initially shows us through an abandoned train stabling area with a cool view of the live metro metres within our grasp. After an hour of very interesting metro history talk we head to another location where they hold an old 1920’s train used for tours once a month around the metro at night. It was utterly exquisite and amazing that such a train has survived the trauma of graffitists or trashing that most behold.
We leave the next day for naples with contacts in hand. A rendezvous with Full & Ipagio early Sunday morning lead us through the old aqueducts beneath naples into massive storage tanks, skinny passage ways where you had to ‘walk like an egyptian’ and through the museum section of their business. Yeah imagine that as your job, you get to explore and tour aqueducts in your very own backyard!
We exit after a few hours and into the nice warm days that naples has to offer, such a contrast to london.
Photo by IPAGIO
We spend the week searching for tofa quarries located in the hills of naples and find a few, one connected to a unique abandoned building.
We take the tours, there are a few around of the underground before just enjoying the topside rush that is naples. Vespa’s wizzing past, crazy traffic without any rules it seems and a shit load of people shopping around the week of sales!
I find myself with guru taking a trip along the southern coastline for two days where we ended up camping in a cave on a beach for lack of accommodation or wanting to pay 80 euro a night (crikey!) for a bed. It worked out to be a really great experience watching the sunrise over the beach and drinking a few bottles of wine to keep warm under the $2 space blanket we had between us and the cardboard for a bed (now we looked like total bums!) we managed to pick up on route to the beach.
We scraped back into naples for a warm shower the last night and met with the napolians again for a dinner to chat about the u’ground again. It was a good finaliser to our trip.. or was it?
Guru and l found ourselves for one last night in paris, a phone call and a rendezvous again with Gilles and Julian. It was Le Metro night again not far from the hotel we ditched our stuff and headed out to meet them. We missed the first leg however we progressed onto an amazing night of abandoned metro stations around paris. We firstly entered one which had been closed since the mid 30’s complete with ornate advertisements on the wall down to the platform where you could see through arches to the live metro. It was dusty yet untouched and l personally believe that’s the real beauty of UE when it comes to locations.
Paris has four abandoned metro stations which were all closed initially around the war time for shelter use and storage. Initially there were 6 or 7 closed stations but as the public raised the issue of re-opening some of them placing heavy pressure on the government and voila cheese and crackers all round.
Photo by GURU
We set off to visit another underground location, what seemingly was a loop for trains turn backs at one period of time. It was transformed into training offices later in its life for the metro staff placed prominently in the city centre. The feeling inside was expressly similar to a underground bunker complete with emergency glow in the dark strip lighting.
As you walk around to the end you come upon a tunnel which leads to the live metro portal; you gaze straight out the a nearby station, spy on the people and watch the trains come flying down the track. A ladder confronts us leading to a disused substation, one of four, two of which are no longer used. The machinery was gone, it was fairly empty yet a massive fan still pumped at the end of the floor. A train was parked in the stabling which we meander along side whilst Julian kept informing us about the metro.
Photo by GURU
One last stop lead to another abandoned metro station which we utilised the company car to find a convenient park right next to the entrance. (yay to the RATP! And emergency parking) We pop in to another station complete with a train on the disused platform. We are beneath a prominent train station and you can hear the commuters passing by above you talking, echoing down through the empty tunnel. We take the opportunity to grab some photo’s, talk more shit and explore the station a little before we are greeted with a wealth of books on the paris metro, ones which l wish l could buy but alas my spending money is bleak so we exit and head back to the hotel.
Photo by GURU
Returning home to London, the dispersion of the group with that sad solemn feeling of solitude greeting you through the doors of waterloo eurail. I can only reminisce back at home as l suck on a can of 1664 of the adventure we had just undertaken and somehow manage to pull off more than we originally planned.
Covering more underground systems than previously before and with a bright future for furthering our next exploration journeys through some of the most spectacular and picturesque UE you could possible entertain yourself with.
With great gratitude l would like to thank firstly the ICA (International Cataphile Group) consisting of some dedicated hardcore explorers willing to travel thousands of miles, spend thousands of (piss weak!) Canadian/Aussie and American dollars for a few weeks in pursuit of such adventures together.
Secondly to the people whom we explored with guiding us through some of the best sites around.
Thirdly to easyjet who managed to fuck just about everyone at one point through the airport… fucking fucks!
***1 The IGC, Inspection générale des Carrières (General Inspection of the Quarries) was established in 1777 by the government in order to monitor the current quarries and prohibit the digging of new quarries.
