Grate Expectations

Is this the most interesting drain in London?



Well, maybe one of them. I've had a lifelong relationship with the Fleet River, the greatest of London's hidden rivers. It flows past my parents' house. The two houses I lived in as an adult lacked basements because the river ran under them. A few hundred years ago, you could have rowed down it, from Hampstead Heath to the Thames. Today, if you go to Ray Street, just next to Farringdon Road, and stand outside the Coach and Horses, and kneel down by this grating, you can hear the river flowing underneath. (Don't get run over by the white vans that use it as a rat run.)



The place features in our next book, Blue Monday, which is published in June. More of that later.