Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 6th October 2024
We go down the drain this week, following 10,000 tourists into the urban River Sheaf. Plus a first look at the City Centre Cycle Hub, opening in 3 weeks (🤞), & Parkwood parkrun news (6 weeks ?🤞?)
Morning. For some, it would be the stuff of nightmares. Descending into the catacombs below our city, alongside two rivers where the city drained its effluent for generations. But the Sheaf & Porter Rivers Trust generously offered me a place on one of their final culvert tours of the season, so how could I refuse?
We also have genuine read it here first news this week, as our sleuthing in very specific subject areas reveals the (approximate) opening dates for the new (and long awaited) City Centre Cycle Hub, and the new city parkrun at Parkwood Springs.
So thanks must go to all our full (paying) members who’ve enabled all that, along with all the 183 other posts in our huge and fairly interesting archive, creaking at the seams with all sorts of things you might like to read about what’s happening out there in the Outdoor City.
And hello to all the new trial subscribers this week. Do have a dig around via the links on the main page, or the search function.
Recent features include a visit to a secret River Don trail, ace Autumn wildlife photos, money saving parkrun news, walking plans, how logs and bogs reduce flooding, and what happens on a brownfield post-industrial wasteland.
That’s just over the last few weeks. We’re a social enterprise publishing every Sunday, with a few extra posts now and then, and if around 20-25 more of you free triallists take a deep breath and sign up to the pocket money £4 a month subscription, we’ll have the resources to start publishing more features like this, or this, more often.
Parkwood Springs parkrun
The funding’s in place, the cafe by the start line is open, as are the toilets (sporadically for the moment), and far away at national parkrun towers, staff are rubber stamping the paperwork. No-one will tell me the exact date of the first official Parkwood Springs parkrun, but it’s probably less than eight weeks away.
There’s much excitement about the new Saturday morning 5k run, not least because of the bumps and hills and history on the new course.
You’ll be able to gasp at some of the best views of the steel city, and organisers say Sheffield will be the only city (in the world?) where you can watch one parkrun while taking part in another. (If you’re very sharp eyed, I gather Hillsborough parkrun will be visible from one of one of the Parkwood Springs parkrun hillsides, and vice versa.)
Funding to set up the run has come from local donations, along with Move More Connecting Communities, Steel City Striders and Hillsborough & Rivelin running clubs, and Arches Housing.
Veteran parkrunners know that the organisation likes to be coy about first official runs, to deter parkrun tourists descending in their thousands.
What I can tell you is that organisers are planning a trial run / walk of the new course on the morning of the Parkwood Springs lantern parade (Saturday 19th October), probably at around 9 a.m. When we know more, you’ll hopefully read it here first.
Hub Hub Hooray
Whisper it among cycling activists who’ve been asking about such a thing for years, but the City Centre Cycle Hub is nearly open. I’m told final fittings are taking place now, with the very earnest hope that the venue will open later in October.
Operator Russell Cutts wants to focus on the positives, after all the shenanigans he and the city council have had to overcome about electricity, e-bike battery risks, access lifts and other matters that have kept us waiting.
When it opens, the hub will have a variety of two tier racks, Sheffield stands and widely-spaced M stands for larger cargo bikes, or for trikes designed for people with disabilities. There’ll be space for about 150 standard shaped bikes or e-bikes, and 10 larger cargo bikes or tricycles, but there’ll be room for expansion as demand grows.
Russell says the new hub is designed to give riders on all kinds of cycles the confidence to make more journeys, knowing their bike will be happy and safe in what he calls a high security cycle park.
His plan is to run an expanding network of high security facilities for cyclists, and says he’s in discussion with landowners aiming to open additional cycle hubs in Yorkshire and beyond. At present the network includes Meadowhall and Sheffield city centre, which Russell says will be operating in time for Christmas shoppers and seasonal workers at both locations.
Entry is via a phone app restricted to registered users, and the hub will be covered by CCTV. Registration is currently £5 a month, with access to all hub locations.
“I speak to a lot of people who say they don’t want to ride their new £3,000 e-bike anywhere there isn’t secure parking. So they often leave it at home and drive instead,” Russell says. “So a network of secure cycle parking hubs leads to more people cycling, and more miles cycled. And the more people join us, the more hubs we can open.”
More information and sign up at: https://www.russellsbicycleshed.co.uk
Underground Tourism
A dipper is “a bird of rocky streams and rivulets”, one of my older nature books tells me, with a picture of a fat wren-like bird looking for water snails and insects in a Scottish mountain burn.
Here’s one bobbing up and down on a rock, just below the Sidney Street car park. It looks up to see me watching, and barrels away along the Porter Brook towards the Leadmill. In a few minutes, I’ll be following it in my wellies and crash helmet.
Over 10,000 brave tourists have descended into the inner city Porter Brook to take the city centre culvert tour so far, raising thousands of pounds to support the work of the Sheaf and Porter Rivers Trust (SPRT) to renaturalise and open up the city’s south western rivers for the public.
Some of my family members shake their heads in horror at the thought of stumbling along dark tunnels under the city centre, where the Sheaf and Porter meet and surge together towards the Don along channels that not so very long ago carried dead dogs, factory waste and tons of urban sewage.
But I braced myself and accepted the generous invitation from SPRT to take one of their last culvert tours of the season, to bring you a sense of the changing fortunes of the city’s underground rivers. And ideally, not flounder into a hole and drown.
“Right, just sit on the bank here, swing over, and head this way. It might be a bit slippy in some places,” says our guide casually. We’re on the bank of the Porter Brook at Matilda Street Pocket Park, and we do as we’re told.
The world changes for the next hour and a half. Stepping in makes you part of the river. It’s cold, the movement weirds out your balance, you’ve never been anywhere like this before and you think every brick and stone might trip you over.
The first sections, in and out of the green light of the river plants and under old bridges lost to public view, seem to go on for ever as you gradually become accustomed to walking with a river. But checking the map later, it’s clear we’ve moved less than a hundred metres.
We crawl and stoop through dark narrow tunnels under the traffic on the A61, and finally emerge on the last stretch of the Porter by the Suffolk Road Spar shop, where SPRT hope to persuade planners to renaturalise the sad and littered stream. We might soon see Dippers and Herons by the railway station.
We’re getting braver, so after all that crawling, we cheerfully duck under the concrete arch towards the roaring confluence of the Porter and Sheaf, where we stand in the darkness, feel the force of the big river and recognise that this is where it gets serious.
We’re now underground for half a kilometre, and the tunnels in our head torch become grander, until we emerge again by a sunlit island, where we can see the water is deeper than our wellies. (For those wearing them. At least three brave young explorers are in their trainers).
We head on with cold feet into the darkness, and are warned into the shallower tunnels, while the rest of the Sheaf laps past behind the Victorian brickwork. There are spiders everywhere, and old decaying metalwork from years past. Previous visitors have arranged golf balls and cracked mobile phones like art exhibits on stones jutting from the wall.
Finally, we reach the Megatron, the cavern where the wake boarders filmed years ago, but it’s too deep for us, so we turn round, retrace our steps and finally emerge back at Matilda Street, where lunchtime picnickers pay little attention as twenty damp tourists emerge from the river and tip out their wellies.
Everyone is fired up and glowing. I’ve always wondered what’s down there, says one elder explorer. Dave tells me he’s now able to piece together how the rivers connect sites like the station, Ponds Forge and Castle Market. And Jess says she’s surprised how the experience made her feel part of the river, seeing Sheffield from the experience of the Sheaf and Porter.
The Porter Brook trickles with the water from the moors, and the snails and larvae reemerge from their disturbed stones. I imagine the Dipper has moved to a quieter rock upstream until its splashing compatriots disappear to the pub, to tell everyone about their adventure.
I’ll have a longer piece on the culvert tour in coming weeks for full members, with more of the photos I couldn’t fit in today.
The Sheaf and Porter Rivers Trust Culvert Tours begin again next summer.
What’s On Out There (from Sunday 6th October)
A tiny selection from our regularly updated What’s On Out There news and listings post. Bear in mind the Red Deer rut starting now too - feature on these fellow citizens coming in the Sheffield Tribune soon.
Sun 6th - Sheffield Conservation Volunteers work day - Wadsley Common
Mon 7th - Graves Park Climate Resilience project - Digging Deeper For All highlights talk at Lees Hall Golf Club
Mon 7th - Parkwood Springs - Lantern Making Workshops
Tues 8th - Sheffield Ramblers Walk - Longshaw (8m - public transport from city centre)
Weds 9th - CycleBoost Learn to Ride & Cycle Confidence Training - Hillsborough women only sessions, booking req’d
Thurs 10th - Friends of Porter Valley work morning
Fri 11th - Walk the Ethels (from Edale - £7.50)
Sat 12th - Parkwood Springs volunteer morning
Sun 13th - Sheffield TenTenTen trail race & fun run (£15-£27)
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Love this piece about the underground exploration. I feel as if I’ve been down there. Maybe now I don’t need to actually do it myself!