Follow My Tracks

I wove my way down to Kent through London, early on Sunday morning. The streets lay empty as they do in that slightly eerie post-apocolyptic fashion. The city sighs relief after another Saturday night where the pavements swell with people and alcohol. I enjoy these moments of peace.

Grain Tower

I met up with VanishingDays and we headed to our first destination. Grain Tower. The tide was out and the small brick causway took us across the the windswept structure. I didn’t bring spare shoes. This was going to be muddy. I took the time to stop on the way and play with my new light meter and my SQA. We were in no rush. This was to be a day of relaxed explores.

A ladder had been lashed over the block of stone where the stairs had once been and we easily ascended up to the tower. There is not much left in this structure but some interesting rooms, vantage points and sun warmed spots where I could stop and swap the backs of the camera and load up some more film. The day was hand numbingly cold but bright. The first day of the year that I had spent outside and thought that it was a beautiful day.

From the top of the battery you can look out to Sheppy. As a first explore with each other it was a good chance to speak freely and figure each other out about. We descended the same way we had come and walked back across the causway.

Shorts’ Tunnels

We made a slight detour on the way to see if we could access the tunnels of the demolished Grain Fort. No such luck the access has been filled and digging it back out would be a job for a warm Summers day.

Shorts are the remnants of an old sea plane factory that has long been demolished and redeveloped into housing. The houses have been built upwards so that now you can only see the top of an arch that allowed access to large vehicles into the complex. If you know how to get into the tunnels then great. If you don’t, dont ask. Too many ways in are now sealed. Wait for a tour from the Shorts Preservation Society.

One we were in we wondered the complex, its storage tunnels and the air raid shelters. They go on for many miles and there are small scraps that hint at the people who have spent long nights in hiding, listening to the shells above exploding. I am told that there are bats living there, but we didnt see any. We walked from one end to the other and back. The place has great potential for light painting but will require more torces. Bring me the light.

After a long night out, we slept in a little. Up to sausages and eggs and to get ready for the day ahead. We had some plans. We drove down tot he docklands and eyes up the Millennium Mill. A large imposing but crumbling structure at right next to a small housing estate. Security on this place was know to be shit hot. We eyed it up through a hole in the gate and Security were sat their in their van, looking almost directly at us.

We took the back way in and crawled. As we neared the fence we saw a read car and a large group of people that security didn’t seem to mind being there. We sat and waited, and waited. Nothing happened. We looked on and came to the conclusion they must be preparing for some filming. Not a lot of point in us trying to cross the fence just to get caught. We crawled back the access and left, cold and wet.

PLAN B:

We headed over to Harold Wood. Easy access to the site and the mortuary. As these places usually do, it held a cold feeling. The average temperature was about 3 degrees. We unpacked and snapped our photos of the amazingly intact room. Metal slabs lay shine and polished, sinks clean. Small items that I had seen in previous images were now gone. The spray taps, some instruments but the room felt like it was simply waiting for the hospital to re-open.

We had vaguely heard the woop of a siren and once we were finished, made a quick exit the way we had come.

Night Time Activity:

It had been a while since such a large group of Urbexers had gathered and this was a particularly surreal. Access to Temple Court is very easy and enough access points that we all slipped in via a variety of routes and made our way upwards towards the roof.

The building stands a spitting distance from St Paul’s and offers unrivaled views. Some fun photos and a nearly party atmosphere was in the air, coupled with the fact that if anyone were to see us, we’d be rumbled.

We sat and chatted and enjoyed the bright lights view of the city and made our way down the stairs to the ground floor. Our exit was comical. Eight people all over the hoarding, one after the other and onto the street. We walked away, collecting another on route to my favourite, Sam Smiths pub where we chewed the fat before splitting into two groups. Some were going forward to crack a tower and I would collect them later. VanishingDays, GoblinMerchant and I wondered down the Grays Inn road and went our various ways.

I came back later to see that there were two police cars parked, lights flashing but no sirens. Were they picking up explorers? Maybe? They waited until they had left before various people made their way out of the site and vanished in the dark night.

This is the start of what is supposed to be an epic weekend of Urbex.

I collected Nebby on my way down and we parked up and went for a pint in a gangster biker pub. We sat for an hour and waited for Patch to arrive. He got lost as he tends to do walking the whole three hundred meters from the train station to where we were waiting.

We were to take a well trod access route and once we had parked the car in a convenient place, we geared up and went over the top.

We landed between the hoarding and a heras and ran for cover. Wait for when the security patrols were supposed to come past. Nothing. Dash towards the entrance to Side A. The Heras has been tied shut. A very wet shuffle under the fence and get covered in water pouring down a set of steps, behind the hall and into the station.

Up and obvious set of steps and through a very small hole in a wall and we were in The White Room. Home to the temporarily homeless Urbexers that have come to London for the night. The once pristine bed shows their dirty grey remains and a can of beer has been poured into two glassed. The beer is still.

Collect ourselves here. When ready, we leave back the way we had came.

A climb up some scaff and onto a wet sloping duck board roof using a few exposed steel wires in the concrete and the big girders themselves to heave ourselves up precariously onto the next darker level.

I happened to have a big builders ladder tucked into my back pocket. This can be precariously positioned to allow one access to the further levels. You happen to appear at the entrance to control room A. We’re in.

Control Room A is the most beautiful art deco room full of dials and things that you want to press. It is the ultimate pinnacle of excessive beauty in a place of raw power. You can almost hear the hum and see the lights for vast swathes of London turn on and off at the flick of a single level. Ealing 1 and Ealing 2 catch my eye.

Once we had looked and played enough we went up to one of the chimneys. These iconic landmarks that I had been looking at since I was a child were suddenly very close and unimaginably big. We climbed ladder after ladder after ladder and gained the base of the chimney. We could see expansion bolts in its brick work that had allow other to ascend further to sit on the rims of these columns. I had to touch their peeling cream paint work. It was a cold night and we got cold quickly. I started down across the lights of London. It was time to go down again.

We then had to down-climb our two slightly dodgy ascents. I am told that on previous trips an abseil has been rigged. This seems like the easier option should we ever return.

We had to descend to the ground level again and cross the turbine hall over to Side B. A slight wait in case the security patrol was going to pass. It didn’t. We had to climb a particularly muddy slope and run around the outside of the building to gain access to Side B. An easy stair case, an unlocked gate and a tight squeeze through a loose board and we were in Control Room B. Compared to A this was a space ship of polish steel now covered in dust and dirt.

A squeeze back out and we descended the stairs to the tunnels. A and B have both been bricked up at their mid points, but from the far bank side of the river. This really marked the end of our trip. We decided it best to bolt out the end of Side B and skirt round the boundary fence to where we had come in. Reverse the moves and we were out in the car.

It was an amazing explore and a great way to get a tour of the entire site in one night.