It's fair to say 2021 has been a year to forget so far, much the same as 2020 ended. A lockdown that came into force in early January has meant exploring has been off the cards as well as my other main hobby - unless that is you happen to be a Youtuber which is apparently a 'get out of jail free' card for ignoring all the lockdown restrictions, or so it seems - but I digress. I've not explored anything since early December, and I, like many others, have been going stir crazy so when an opportunity came up to do with my work but also meant a chance to do a piece of legitimate exploration too, it made me very happy.

This factory and training centre on the south coast of the UK was built in 1928 and produced street signage, smaller signs for machinery control panels, safety signs, badges, stickers and all sorts for the local council. Along with that they also seemed to run training workshops on site including bricklaying, plumbing, and other stuff. It closed in 2018 and the process of clearing the site for demolition began this week. That's where we come in. Last year as a few of you may know I started up a new business venture with a longtime friend of mine buying and selling old industrial stuff among other general old crap. By total chance we spotted some items from here being advertised on Facebook Marketplace and got in touch with the council who said we were free to come down for a look around and to buy whatever we wanted. Cue a mad scramble and an obscenely early start to get down there for 9am, along with other interested buyers. We were let in and were able to wander around at will, and I of course snapped many photos on my phone as I was walking around looking for things to add to the pile of stuff we wanted to buy. We ended up taking a whole car load of stuff home for a very very reasonable amount of money - dirt cheap - including four multi-drawer units, industrial lockers, 70 pieces of brand new signage of various sorts, and assorted other bits and pieces we liked the look of. Luckily a lot of the other people there were only interested in things like the large machinery or fixtures, or the large metal storage cabinets so there wasn't much crossover at all and everyone was really nice.

It's days like this I really love what I do now.

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