Couple Celebrates Anniversary with a Fatberg Tour

A British couple looks to the sewers for an anniversary date.

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Pop quiz: It’s the eve before an important anniversary, and you’re stumped. You need to come up with a gift for your significant other. Something unique. Something that shows you really thought through the occasion. Which do you choose:

A)   Dinner with candles followed by some sort of really expensive dark-chocolate dessert
B)   Movies, popcorn and a big soda that barely fits in the armrest hole.
C)   A stroll through town with a little antique shopping and a nice brunch
D)   A tour of a “fatberg” in the sewers of London

Yes, you read that correctly: a tour of a sewer fatberg. And yes, that’s what one real life couple chose do in celebration of their first anniversary. According to an article in the London Evening Standard, Dan MacIntyre petitioned Thames Water for the opportunity to take his girlfriend, Dunya Kalantery, on a surprise tour of the infrastructure below their feet in search of fatbergs, caused by accumulated fats, oils and grease.

The couple apparently hooked up after discovering a shared interest in a 15-ton bus-sized fatberg that had accumulated in the sewers of Kingston about a year ago. (See: Britain Removes Bus-Sized Lump of Fat From Sewer) The anniversary present was a way for MacIntyre to honor that shared interest. (Can we get an “awwww?”)

After getting permission from Thames Water, the couple descended into the sewers and viewed a few mini-fatbergs up close and personal.

“It was an amazing experience, the sewer architecture was incredible. It was a fantastic surprise,” says Kalantery in the London Evening Standard.

MacIntyre called it “the perfect anniversary present.”

But Mike Gunn, who is in charge of London’s sewer network, says it’s not something Thames Water would normally allow. But, in the case of true love, it was hard to say "no."

“Once we were over the shock of the request, we didn’t want to stand in the way of true love. But we are definitely not tour guides,” he said in the article.

Sewer system tour for anniversary date? I'm thinking you might want to rethink that dark-chocolate dessert first.



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