Follow My Tracks

Sometimes we all need one. A warm night sat by The River in the gentle rain. The explore had failed. The site had become well trod of late and someone had figured out any which way that people had been getting in and so C* and I sat in the shadow of the abandoned flour mill and let  the rain fall, tea was in abundant supply from a small thermos. We would occasionally get up and go for a poke around just to check that we had covered all our bases and the come back to look at the lights reflected on the gently rippling water.

We all occasionally need nights like this. Nights that do not go as planned but none the less become something beautiful, something worth noting and I mark that with a post here. It is worth remembering that as well as the stunning sites that we see, the people we explore with (some real characters that I couldn’t create in my head – and that is a strange place) are just as important.

I had a niggling to be inside somewhere crumbling for weeks and that is what had taken us out that night and yet, riding the night bus home after a complete fail, I still re-ran the night in my head and smiled. Tea from a thermos has a tin taint that reminds me of other cold but fun nights and this was full of as much camaraderie. It’s good to see the places but it’s amazing to see them with someone else. Someone to have banter with, to share stories that will get ever taller and ever fainter.

This post is for my explorer friends, who whilst now are scattered around the globe, deserve a brief moment of thanks.

TTFN

In the depths of Surrey stands West Park… But not for much longer. It’s formidable brick walls crumble under the weight of progress and this building having been built as an institution, commandeered to house foreign soldiers during The War, before finally being handed over the health service and providing another place for the nation to incarcerate the mad and unsightly specimens of society, or those that we simply wished to ignore, has been deemed not worth saving.

It was sad to see the first parts of the place reduced to large mounds of rubble and the ghosts of the building stood by and watched us and the workers in silence. The usual banging doors and creaking floorboards fell quiet and we walked for hours through the twisting maze undisturbed. Usually, where they might protest at our trespass, now knowing they would soon be haunting no-where, the ghosts stood aside and allowed us to pass unhindered, almost begging for us to preserve their little slice of limbo, hoping that we might just catch them in our photos, as well as the place in which they hid.

West Park lay open before us. Where doors had once been nailed shut, they hung loosely on their hinges and the few that were still solid had an open window near by. Climbing to the top of the water tower we could see where the work had begun and see the vast task that levelling the site would be. It was a fortress, even now, and so much still remained.

We wondered as if in a daze. The site was so familiar. The smells of the asylum gripped me and I walked around, damp, decay and even now something slightly clinical, filled my nostrils as i went looking at the place. The stories of these walls and rooms, how I wished the could speak and could part their paint cracked lips to whisper what had been.

I had come armed with film, its nostalgia and tactility suiting a place of such texture and yet i took few pictures. This trip had time for sitting and, perched on old chairs in a high room we swapped imperfect memories.

Putting my foot through the floor reminded me that this was still an organic place that moved in unseen ways and whilst it was an old friend of warm-toned summer evenings, it like any wounded beast that knows the spears are closing in, might take one last swipe and manage to take someone with it.

We left and had tea by the fire.

When you are planning to leave for a trip, there are occasions where you get the feeling that things may not go to plan at all throughout… Waking up to find that my petrol gauge said I had petrol but that the car wouldn’t start was the first of these signs. A short walk to the petrol station and this was resolved. Ell and Larey met me at Wmin.ac, we packed the car and started to head towards Dover, nearly encountering a second petrol situation due to a dated SatNav map. The traffic on the M25 was almost stationary and so we missed our planned crossing and were packed onto the next. A few hours later we were leaving the dark port of Dunkirk and weaving our way towards Brussels. We caught a couple of hours sleep in a service station and arrived to Brussels just before the pre-dawn light started to roll across the sky.

The Horror Labs

Otherwise known as the Old Veterinary College. It has the one room that people want to see. The remains of what was once a fine collection of pickled animals and parts. It seemed odd to start a trip over something so dead but it was somewhere people had not been before and was more or less on our way. Several of the animals that were the most interesting had vanished and more broken glass covered the floor. This place had been well walked and ransacked since I had last been there. Efforts had been made to back-fill some of the entrances and yet we were in quickly and easily. There is no keeping out people who want it enough. We exited to the most beautiful morning, a pink, bright sky above Brussels, the smell of formaldehyde sticking in our nostrils.

Power Plant IM

I had seen photos of this epic place. It is often confused with ECVB which is a general name for the electricity company as well as the name of a site that we did on a previous trip to Belgium. We started in the started in the single cooling tower that is divided from the main site by a canal. It was a cold day and the wind cut through any number of layers to leave us shivering in moments after leaving the warm car. We walked down a covered walkway, the first fallen leaves blown around our feet, lifted and as quickly dropped on the soft earth that shifted slightly under foot. I had been under cooling towers before at Thorpe Marsh but all but one of these had been stripped and even the one that was complete showed no easy way to access the upper level. This was a different game. Wooden slats lay between concrete posts and a section had been cleared. We climbed upwards and appeared into the bright floor above. Small shells filled troughs that would have carried the water this last leg of its journey through the power station, but we were a long way from the sea. In the middle was a great plug-hole, green from dampness, gaping and quickly black. As I approached it, as with the edge of anything, my stomach would twist into knots and you get that vertigo urge to fling yourself into the space, believing that the space itself will cushion and support you. Not being able to see the bottom only enhanced this feeling.

We climbed down and walked back across the canal. As we crossed the water, the man in his little booth on the lock withdrew the bridge after us. Had he seen us climb in and out? Probably? He probably also had a good idea of where we might be going.

Accessing the main building of IM was like walking through a dream. Upwards and downwards through dark corridors illuminated with dirty green light. As if the walls has spouted a glowing plant life. These long caves were transitional and marked is a much longer way than usual the movement from a world with an established, obeyed, order to one of anarchy, where fences were objects of a challenge within a game and where there were no exclusion zones.

IM is odd because it feels like that everyone simply downed tools and left. So much is there untouched that you half expect someone to walk in, pull of plastic covers and watch the building spring back to life. The lights are already on and the stillness in the building is one that waits for something to return. The very bricks longed for the noise that had filled the halls. We worked our way through a maze of stairs and then back tracked and exited back through the caves, the shadows playing tricks with the eyes, or was there something shifting in the dark?

University L

The wind had picked up and the rain started to lash down with a little move conviction as we entered the campus of University L. This site had eluded me once before. We walked the perimeter of the block we knew to be open and thought for a while that once again it may not happen. And then all of a sudden it did, in a way that could only mean we were in Belgium. A ladder let us in and it lay there in the ivy as if some gift, deployed by some mischievous God who just wanted to see what we might do with it. We did not want to disappoint and so slipped inside.

The block was a maze of corridors and labs filled with beautiful wooden fume cupboards. Ground glass joints lay strewn across dusty benches and empty lecture theaters lay still, papers scattered across the floor and boards once full of equation and formulae now full of the names of explorers that had come before us. Some names I knew, others I did not. Unmarked jars held clear liquids of varying viscosity and the urge to touch them, pour them, was only just overcome by the idea that something corrosive might be inside the glass.

We had to press on. There was still one more stop and a long drive before we would reach our destination for the day. We stashed our little helper somewhere that we hoped would not be obvious but useful to the people who might actually look.

Montzen Garre

I had wanted this site but it was not to be. We arrived to promptly find several large white cars pulling up. They lifted a gate and drove around the back of the long train yard. We slipped up the side. As we approached the platforms, the sounds of power tools was enough to suggest that this is not where we might not want to be. We slipped away and back to the car. Another day.

We drove on to Germany, to Herten and our host for the night. We could not have asked for better. After the few hours of snatched sleep in the car last night and a few bottles of beer, I crashed out in my sleeping bag.

Planning is a large part of U.E and it appeals to the child in me. Pouring over maps, or Google Earth. Searching for things that people have seen, leads, rumours… And there is a trip coming. The ferries have been booked, the dates confirmed, the car booked in for a service (and the breakdown cover arranged!).

It will be epic and I am filled with that child like excitement. Remember what it was to be young and laying in bed early Christmas morning, knowing that everyone else was asleep and feeling the weight of the stocking at the end of your duvet? That’s where I am. I enjoy making those decisions about cameras, films, lenses… Bring it on. Back to Europe!

Hello All,

I’ve been a bit quiet of late. It’s been a great summer and as with all things it’s good to have a break…

I sat in Heathrow airport eating a sub-standard excuse for an English Breakfast with a knife that resembled a serrated tongue depressor more than is sharper relatives. The year so far had provided some cracking exploration and experiences that seemed far too distant and far too faded already.

And then two weeks had flown past – I sat on the long flight home and ate my bland in-flight meal and watched London get closer on the little screen. Then with a shake and a jerk I was back on home soil, sat on the train to Paddington and looking through the window streaked with rain, knowing that tucked just out of sight there were people, just like me crawling into the dark damp spaces, just to see what’s there and I knew that soon enough I would be back there with them.