SubscribeThis 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.
