So I posted this pic of the red castle a few weeks ago. Some friends and I went down there and met the caretaker who gave us a bit of a tour and said we could buy some sweet 70's motel furniture at bargain prices. Anyway I was totes gonna go back and pick up some sweet hotel furniture and get another tour from the caretaker, but I left it too long and now this! Pics from http://theworstofperth.com
Do you have a place you wish you hadn't left it too late to explore? When did you fail to seize the day? Tell me of your exploration regrets!
Well there once upon a time was a Paper Mill, a great big blue paper mill. It shut down a few years ago after a fire had taken a chunk out of the building. I kept putting it off wanting to get more experience in exploring first. Finally came a weekend I had off work and just had to go check it out. After doing some research I found they had started tearing it down a week prior. I went down in the middle of the night and found it. I climbed across the raging Mississippi river on a bridge carrying pipes from one side to the other... When I got across and to the fence...FML majority of the building was gone and not worth trying to get over a fence with barbed wire wrapped around the top. THE END
There used to be a juvenile probation center(one of many) in my town back in the early 2000's. One day around '08 I was lost and driving around looking for an address or something non-UE related, and I noticed the building looked abandoned and fenced in, so I "made a mental note" to myself to go check it out later. Never did. Just last week I went to go check it out and it's now a school. You can only imagine the anger with myself.
Worst was that I found a completely abandoned greenhouse complex one day. From the looks of it it looked abandoned for years and no construction fence whatsoever, and withing biking distance from my home. Two weeks later I went there with a friend who was interested in exploring and found ... nothing. The whole place had been torn down and cleared, only thing left was the concrete base and two dumpsters from the wrecker...
Posted by MapMan | 18/9/2005 19:25 | Hedy Lamarr made porn? Posted by turbozutek | 20/9/2005 2:29 | Dude, educate us!
I've been an active explorer for over five years now but in the years before I had always been awed by the photos of Cane Hill, it was arguably the best derelict asylum ever in the whole of the UK. And when I finally got the chance to go explore stuff properly it looked like this...
I was a year and a half too late, and the bigger kick in the balls was we couldn't even get on site that day as there were firemen there damping down stuff after a fire...the only bits left of the place now are the water tower and chapel, and the burnt out shell of the admin block which suffered a 'mysterious fire' a year or so ago.
I also wish I had explored Pyestock one more time before it was demolished...
There was a HUGE cookie factory in Richmond that I had always dreamed of exploring. I finally made it inside one day but my friends were being pussies and made me leave after juts checking out the first floor.
Pics like yours are exactly why I'm checking out an abandoned restaurant this week
We spent a few hours trying to find a way inside. Lots of graffiti and broken chairs inside, but no luck for us. Went back a few months later to try again and this is what I got:
Posted by mookster I have a few regrets, definitely.
I've been an active explorer for over five years now but in the years before I had always been awed by the photos of Cane Hill, it was arguably the best derelict asylum ever in the whole of the UK. And when I finally got the chance to go explore stuff properly it looked like this...
I was a year and a half too late, and the bigger kick in the balls was we couldn't even get on site that day as there were firemen there damping down stuff after a fire...the only bits left of the place now are the water tower and chapel, and the burnt out shell of the admin block which suffered a 'mysterious fire' a year or so ago.
I also wish I had explored Pyestock one more time before it was demolished...
My dad was a test cell engineer at Pyestock, he took me on a few trips when it was still operational in the early 60,s. My brother in law was security officer at Pyestock just after it closed and he said he didn't give a toss about anything that involved leaving his heated shack. Pystock was home to the 'National Gas Turbine Establishment', I worked in 1974 as a welder on the construction of a wind tunnel there. The N.G.T.E. collabarated with the 'Royal Aircraft Establshment in conducting some of the highest security, above top secrect projects, space age cutting edge technology of the 20-75 era. I wont drift to far into speculation but from what I've gathered from working there and hearing first hand accounts these facilities were the closet thing the U.K. had at the time to an area 51. It really is worth doing an image search for 'N.G.T.E' and if anyone has any shots would be great to see them! I would have loved to have explored it but I left for Canada circa 75.
[last edit 2/8/2019 6:33 AM by bobthetob - edited 1 times]
My dad was a test cell engineer at Pyestock, he took me on a few trips when it was still operational in the early 60,s. My brother in law was security officer at Pyestock just after it closed and he said he didn't give a toss about anything that involved leaving his heated shack. Pystock was home to the 'National Gas Turbine Establishment', I worked in 1974 as a welder on the construction of a wind tunnel there. The N.G.T.E. collabarated with the 'Royal Aircraft Establshment in conducting some of the highest security, above top secrect projects, space age cutting edge technology of the 20-75 era. I wont drift to far into speculation but from what I've gathered from working there and hearing first hand accounts these facilities were the closet thing the U.K. had at the time to an area 51. It really is worth doing an image search for 'N.G.T.E' and if anyone has any shots would be great to see them! I would have loved to have explored it but I left for Canada circa 75.
That's some wonderful insider info. I love Pyestock, it will always be on a pedestal as the greatest place I ever explored and my four visits in 2010 simply weren't enough. I've read up so much about it, there is a fantastic website out there - www.ngte.co.uk - which has hundreds of photos from mid-00s explores of the site before security went really crazy, as well as the biggest archive of documentation and material I've ever seen on Pyestock including breakdowns of what every building did.
In the winter of 2010/2011 I was lucky enough to explore it's half-sister just down the road next to Farnborough Airport - the place formerly known as the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine, latterly the Centre for Human Sciences. This was, if anything, an even more secretive place than Pyestock as it was purely for military technology not a combination of military/civilian like the NGTE was. There is almost no information online about the site and what they did however on my last explore there as they were demolishing it I found a complete site survey report from 1999, a couple of years before it closed alongside Pyestock which detailed every building and what it had in it and what it did. The facility was used to develop and test new military equipment using live human soldiers as test subjects, subjecting the equipment to tests in simulated real-world conditions. As such there was a pair of enormous climatic cold chambers, a pair of large heat chambers, decompression chambers, mock up fighter pilot cockpits, an impact test track and the only remaining operational human centrifuge in the UK. The site was flattened in 2011 however the defence company QinetiQ still own and run the centrifuge, so there is the bizarre setting of a massive human centrifuge building sitting smack bang in the middle of a new housing estate!
Meh, I have no regrets; maybe not going saved my ass. You only can deal with the present. Doing nothing is being neutral... and static I tend to regret shit that blew up in my face and left permanent damage.
Just when I thought I was out... they pulled me back in.
Man I grew up next to what looked like a time capsule house in the middle of all these trees,
It was totally abandoned and there was even a broken ladder heading up to a deck with a door slightly ajar. But as a 13 year old I was too afraid of getting in trouble. Went back a few years later and nothing but a faint outline 😔
This is the worst feeling ever. I found Lincoln Way in Clariton when I was a kid, like 10/11 years old. This was before anybody really knew about it and there were even some people still living in the houses. It was a whole street of abandoned houses that everybody just up and left and was really creepy. Fast forward 5 years and I'm able to drive and exploring w/o camera was a big hobby of mine, but I had forgotten about Lincoln Way honestly because I went away to school and by now the whole street is abandoned with about 7 houses. Bought my camera a few years after that and realize that the infamous Buzzfeed has picked up stories on Lincoln Way and everybody and their mother is getting in and ruining everything. 24 hour police surveillance the whole nine yards. Everything dies down and I knew it had from some friends that live in the area so I was going to head in. I drive home 2 hours from school to visit and explore and as I'm driving past every single house is just sitting in its own pile. I can't lie some tears may have been shed...
They say I gotta respect the system, but there ain't no respect in that system for me.
UVA closed one of their childrens hospitals. I was quick to react and went to scope it out immediately. Heavy security of course. They tore it down about a month later along with a few other buildings I wanted to check out.
UVA is gonna implode an old stadium of their's this summer. I'm trying all that I can to get in there but they secure everything so well that the building's might as well still be active.
There was a big untouched power plant near Baltimore. I had planned everything out and set a date for it but the day before the weekend of the explore, I read that they started demolition a week ago.
A huge mineral processing facility in Belleville, Ontario. It's been on my radar for 6 or 7 years now, and I was doing a check every couple of weeks or so as it was still alarmed and sealed. Got REALLY busy in life and stumbled a three week old article about how demolition of the site was well underway.
This is so relatable. I stepped away from exploring for the most part in 2018, the last few weeks I've been working to add more to my local list and in that process I found I missed a few spots that I really wanted to see! Nursing Home.. Meat processing plant.. so many missed opportunities!
"Live out your imagination, not your history." ~ Stephen Covey
There's been a growing antipathy toward Urbexing by property owners and locals - calling them nuisances, trouble-makers and vandals. Would anyone like to share accounts of any confrontations he/ she's had?
Ethics
