## Late is better than never!

I, Mutabor, have been having long relations with this place. When I just came having interest in the underground places, I asked a question about the exact this place. And finally, after ten years, together with Rada, I have visited this location.

This is a very famous old construction built at the end of the XVIIIth century to supply Tsar residence with water. It had been used until the beginning of the XXth century. Now the place is abandoned and slowly decaying. The construction had been called Taitsky Conduit from the village Taitsy, were was the springs, from which water was taken. The conduit consisted of small ceramic pipes, opened ditches, bigger brick underground galleries and even the deep underground mine cut in the rocky soil.

Exploring the whole conduit path would require too much time. So we limited ourselves with a part of it. First we went along the opened part which was looking like a small ditch in the field. Then the first underground part had began, but it was fallen into decay. We had seen a pit in the ground with bricks scattered around it (pic 1), a short part of the brick pipe came away from that pit and was ended with a similar pit (pic 2). Although it was low and short (pic 3), I had decided to crawl through it. Then we went ahead: the condition of the brick pipe continued to be bad, we often met depressions and collapsed parts (pic 4, 5).

In this way we were walking along the conduit path, waiting for it to be long and high enough to get inside it. No, we met the same short parts of the small brick pipe, collapsed in many places. Suddenly we saw a brick booth remaining the village lavatory ahead (pic 6). But it was made using concrete instead of lime and there was a concrete slab on its floor. So it had been built at least in the middle of the XXth century, a long time later after the conduit had finished working. So it had no relation to the conduit itself. Nevertheless we had inspected the booth, saw a compressed air bottle in its basement (pic 7) and found out an underground room near the boot, but without a connection to the conduit (pic 8).

Then we had reached a place where the conduit crossed the Kuz'minka river. Here water flowed by an impressive aqueduct made of stones and bricks (pic 9). Its trough was still firm and could be used as a bridge (pic 10). After it one can see the face of the next underground part which is higher than before (pic 11).

Of course, we entered it and got into the underground brick gallery, where we could go instead of crawling (pic 12). And it was also long enough: its end hid in the darkness! In one place the gallery dome was nevertheless collapsed and covered with a concrete slab which had already cracked (pic 13). Then we found out that above that place there a tractor way in the fields crossed the conduit. Then we reached a turn, where we could play with colour lighting (pic 14). But shortly after it the gallery ended with the successive depression (pic 15).

We decided to go ahead along the conduit path outside, since there was no way to enter the next underground part. Somewhere the earth embankment pointed to the presence of the conduit, in other places it disappeared and only the revision wells gave away the presence of the underground gallery (pic 16, 17). We had had a look into a well and had seen that the underground part is flooded. In the other place the embankment was partially destroyed and the brick wall of the gallery was naked (pic 18).

Our time was expiring, so we went back and halted by the aqueduct. I had made a picture of the dry cow-parsnip culms grown on an open landfill. The dark snow clouds at the background made the landscape doomsday-like (pic 19). So the first Mutabor's visit to the place, which he dreamt to visit for ten years, had finished!

Here are Rada's pictures from the same trip (pic 20–33).

The show is going on

After a short time we (Mutabor and Rada) would like to coutinue our exploration of the Taitsky Conduit. That time we decided to start from the back side and trace the conduit from the Babolovsky Park in the town Pushkin, which is the destination of the conduit. After some rambling in the area, we had spotted a straight canal — the final part of the conduit (pic 34). Moving along it we had reached some ruin, in which we had recognized the "Monk" grotto named because of the sculpture of a monk, formerly placed inside it. This grotto had not only aesthetic purposes: it was used as the flow splitter: the part of the water delivered by the conduit was directed to the famous Tsar bath-tube in the Babolovsky Palace. Now nothing is remained from the monk sculpture and the grotto looks like a devastated earth-house with debris of stones and bricks (pic 35). One can find out a pipe covered with soil, but a shovel is needed to ensure whether an underground cave exists behind it (pic 36).

So we had continued our travel, looking for an explorable underground part of the conduit. Once we had made a halt, during it we had spotted a punk caterpillar, which would turn into a small punk instead of a butterfly ;-) (pic 37). And finally we had found the part of the brick pipe (pic 38), where we could be able to make the first underground photos (pic 39–41). Then we started moving back, but under the ground: formerly we turned out to walk near the undergrond part of the conduit, but didn't recognized it. In particular, we had stated that countrary to that written in the websites, the part of the conduit under the automotive road was in the rather perfect condition! (pic 42) And the continuation of the conduit was almost all the time straight with the only turn (pic 43). From the some place the condition of the brickwork started to go worse. First the roots pushing throught the dome shown up (pic 44), then the brickwork itself loosed its perfect form (pic 45, 46). At some point we had noticed that the echo from our steps had become resonant and something came into view ahead (pic 47). Soon we had reached the final point of our trip: the historical brick conduit turned into the modern concrete pipe (pic 48). There was a modern holiday hotel above this place; it seemed that during its construction the part of the conduit was damaged and replaced with the concrete pipe. In principle one can pass through it, and probably there is another old part of the conduit behind it, but we had not got more time to proove this fact.

Copyleft Plutonia 2016
Don't forget your number!

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