Following up Simon Malone’s memories of his visit to the 1962 ‘leak’ on the Basingstoke Canal, Phil Dunford has been in touch with these photographs of a similar expedition.

“In July 1978, a friend and I took our canoes out to Greywell to explore the tunnel, which was then open at the Odiham end.

“The darkness was intense and although we had torches, it was very hard to make out much.

“The flash photographs we took showed much more than we could see on the day. The wall was marked in places with the distance in from the portal. At around 3,000 feet in, we found the blockage where the tunnel roof had collapsed. It didn’t seem risky at the time, but that’s the folly of youth!”