East Lancashire might be famous for some impressive engineering feats, the Spinning Jenny, or The Empire State Building's foundations for instance, but a vital 'highway' that runs under our doorsteps often goes unnoticed.
The 72-mile-long Haweswater Aqueduct has supplied 2.5 million Northerners in Lancashire, Cumbria, and Greater Manchester with water since it was completed in 1955.
It's the UK's longest treated water aqueduct carrying 570 million litres of water per day.
Bar a few pipe bridges, it's mostly under the surface and, miraculously, is fed almost entirely by gravity on its route from a reservoir of the same name near Penrith, to another reservoir in Heaton Park, outside Manchester.
Water flows past Kendal and under the M6, south through the Forest of Bowland, before cutting through Great Harwood, Clayton-le-moors, Huncoat, Rising Bridge, and Rawtenstall during the East Lancashire section.
A process called 'syphoning' allows for the water to travel upwards when required at sections such as this, essentially allowing for the weight of the water to force it against gravity up the pipe's surface.
A bridge at the bottom of Mill Lane in Great Harwood is also a good spot to catch a glimpse of one of its pipe bridges.
Back in 2005, United Utilities began preparations to inspect the huge structure.
The result? The Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme: a huge project that will see the replacement of six tunnel sections.
One of which, Hyndburn Borough Council, and numerous other local authorities, have all approved.
A section from Bolton Avenue in Huncoat, continuing underneath The Coppice and Accrington Bypass, south to Bury, is set to get a newly-made pipeline, with a tunnel boring machine paving the way at depths of up to 200 metres.
United Utilities said: "Investigations along the pipeline began in February 2019 and the data gathered helped us develop our proposals for the work.
"We put our plans out for consultation in Spring 2020 and nine planning applications were submitted to seven different local planning authorities spanning across Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester."
UU is expected to announce the final contractors for the project in the coming months.
Ahead of the pipeline's replacement - expected in 2025 - United Utilities has granted the Lancashire Telegraph access to extraordinary images detailing its construction.
At this section, workers are near the River Hindburn, in the north of the Forest of Bowland.
The Bowland Forest Tunnel is 10 miles long but descends just five metres to where it finishes in Newton-in-Bowland, keeping the water flowing downhill.
After 31 miles the mega-pipe becomes four, each of which is between 1.2 metres and 1.4 metres in diameter, explaining the layout of the pipe bridges in Clayton-le-moors and Great Harwood.
When the Haweswater Reservoir's water levels are low, remains of the village can be seen above the surface, with old dry stone walls mainly on show.
Without the soon-to-be revamped pipeline and gruelling labour of the 20th-century workers taps in Lancashire homes would be running dry.
But thanks to the impressive megastructure millions of litres continue to be delivered to our homes on a daily basis.
So the next time you run a bath or flush the loo, you can thank this engineering marvel for it.
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