Follow My Tracks

This weekend had been odd. I had found myself looking for things to do up North and stumbled across a report for a place that I hadn’t been to near Leeds. I had the urge to expand out and venture further afield. Plans are coming together for another trip to Urbex.EU but I cant afford to be there every weekend as I might like, there is so much there and yet I feel I haven’t properly tapped what this country has to offer. The UK doesn’t stop at the borders to the South East.

So I loaded the car and headed to Adel. The route seemed familiar. As I approached the site I realized why. I had been there before. The recent reports had made the site seem so different and open that I hadn’t spotted it. Last time I had been seen off by a resident on the other side of the site and walked off by a security gaurd who had appeared out of nowhere. The site had a lot of media exposure and so was periodically secured. A glance at the heavy metal shutters told me that I wasnt going to get in. It was odd to retrace old steps.

The next day would be no better. I had arranged to meet Jon’s parents. A friend who’s been dead for some years now and I was hit with the sudden realisation of how time had rushed past left me feeling odd. I was meeting David later in the afternoon and headed to Steetly. There’s no way to fail here and yet I remembered this as one of my early explores where I eagerly scrambled over the crumbled concrete. I walked now around the site, knowing what was where in the ruins and looking at what had changed, more of the site collapsing in on itself, more rubbish stacking in piles or filling the giant basins that had been sunk into the earth.

More can be learnt of our values from what we discard than what we hoard in our homes and Steetly now stands as a monument to our idea of the disposable and the dispensable. Everything from toys, mattresses and soiled nappies litter the dirt. The site itself half demolished and plans for its redevelopment forever stalling. A show of a clean up was made before I had ever stepped foot in the place and had not progressed further since. I took the few photos that I wanted to. No need now to snap a thousand images away. A select five or six and I was done. I walked back to the car, the sun beating down on the broken stone and the dust whipped up by the odd gust of wind. I had no need to come back here again. I drove away…

It rained all day. Not a summer shower or a dramatic thunderstorm, but grey sheet rain that soaked everything and was cold on the skin. I sat at my desk in the hope that it would brighten up by the time six o’clock came around. And then it did. Jonboy met me after work and we bombed it down to Kent in the warm glow of the evening. Richborough power station stood there, unmoving and uncaring about the two small, fleshy beings that wanted to have a poke around.

Access was easy once we had avoided a rather deep, scummy, trench. I could not keep my feet dry. We had been told that there was sec on site and had seen hi-vis in the hut by the gate as we drove past, but after a few moments, it became apparent that we were the only ones there. We were undisturbed through our visit, apart from a few large birds that appeared to be nesting in the chimney, kestrels maybe? A reason that might prevent further demolition of the site.

In contrast to Thorpe Marsh, a power station of similar style and design, the flood gates to the cooling towers remained closed and water sat several feet deep in their bottom. What lived beneath its dark surface? Did I fancy a swim to find out? No. Several of the shed were firmly secured as were the buildings that lay at one end of the skeletal turbine room. On a casual trip like tonight, climbing and crawling were off. This was a relaxed summers night out where I sought nothing but the sheer enjoyment of a place and not the usual adrenaline rush.

Too often I feel that unless the site is somewhere you have visited several times, we rush to explore as much of it as possible and do not take the time to simply sit in a place. The high octane fuelled explores such as Battersea or The Underground provide a very different type of experience, one which is altogether more wired and passes in something of a blur that even on contemplative reflection, is hard to slow down and digest, it simply happened. Explores like Thorpe Marsh, Steetly or Richborough do not try and rush you through like some cheap attraction, rather they allow you the time and the space to potter about, sit for a while and soak up a place. On this warm summer night that’s what we did. Small details, an empty cable drum, gain much greater attention with a little more time.

We looped the site, avoiding the live substation and cameras the other side of a sharp looking palisade fence, taking time to speak and to photograph and then we left the way we had come, both feeling like summer had finally fully bloomed and that these were a taste of the fruits of long evenings to come. We sat on a kerb to de-kit and pack away, watched the last of the deep red sun fall below the horizon and left the way we had come

Richborough like all places of industry that have been brought to their knees, partially demolished and forgotten in this country, still has that atmosphere of power, and a refusal to be completely erased, but a sadness too. It is tucked away into a corner of Kent, and careful tree planting means that close passing motorists probably do not realised it is there until its several miles away, eyes distracted more with the harsh lights of the subway attached to the petrol station than the giant structures that by the time we left lay in near darkness but for the red lights that marked their location for passing aircraft.

I had been told about Steetley by a few other UE people and decided that as I was up at The Farm for the weekend anyway that I would take the extra hours drive out to Hartlepool and have a look for myself.

The place was wide open and the day was beautiful. I haven’t seen such a stunning run of coastline that was so deserted. Steetley stands there, crumbling but generally unmoving as it is battered by the wind.

A long peer runs out to sea and off it men who once worked at the site now fish on the good days. Several attempts have been made to start to clear the site but the larger settling tanks, a chimney and a few shells of buildings remain.

The colour of the water in the tanks is an awesome shade of blue. It matches the sky that day and so I set about with my tripod to capture the site in HDR, a technique that was very new to me.

Here were the results: