Foxtrot Б-39
The ‘Black Widow’ is a former Russian Foxtrot Б-39 (U 475) Hunter Killer Class Submarine, sat perched in the Medway at Rochester. To get to it you need to apply a bit of creative thinking, but The Winch isn’t exactly the place for the cheatcodes so you’ll have to use the visual clues below. Read the rest of this entry »
Stories from The Shard of Glass.
Stories from The Shard came to the forefront of the national and international press at the start of April. Brad and Otter simultaneously posted reports on their blogs and within 48 hours, every major newspaper and broadcaster with any interest in London or the forthcoming Olympics was seeking information and interviews from anybody who explored in London, to run front page stories. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hungarian Road.
Of course, not every moment of a roadtrip is spent shuffling round sewers, hiding from security guards in the Metro and climbing bridges. There’s the mandatory derping, train play, police intervention, angry foreigner interaction, budget food seeking, ‘prohobo’, sleep deprivation, automobile incidents and general swagger of the Brit abroad. Marc brought his gallic flair to the party, teaching us to speak ‘forrin’ whilst myself and NC Kapita incorrectly assumed that everybody east of Vienna would look and speak like Borat. Read the rest of this entry »
Protected: Sneak Preview
Antwerp Pre-metro
The usual assumption about the Antwerp Pre-metro within the exploring community is that the ‘pre’ represents the fact it hasn’t opened yet. Not correct. The Pre-metro is actually a properly dug and operating metro system, which is just not running metro stock yet. During the IDM weekend, we followed Patch, Site and Jess down into the live network for a look around. Read the rest of this entry »
Bromley-by-Bow
The loops created by the river and road network winding through the industrial areas in East London separate small swatches of land almost equally shared by run down warehouses and disused land, light industrial space and new construction, eagarly cracking on for the forthcoming Olympics. Sat on a patch between some new-build apartments and the A11 is the St Andrews development. Read the rest of this entry »
Newport Transporter
2012, the year of something else? I’d decided I wanted to do some different stuff in different places, and the Newport Transporter Bridge fitted the bill. Brad, Marc, Neb and Urban Fox joined me on the trip down the M4 for this adventure, at a place from which surprisingly few photos have appeared on the internet. Lets rectify that. Read the rest of this entry »
Bad Gastein
The resort of Bad Gastein sits at the top of the Gastein Valley about an hour from Salzburg by car. With a permanant population of less than 6,000, the resort is heavily reliant on tourism, which has historically come in two different ways. Skiing has taken off in the area since 1958, when the world championships were held in the area. Subsequent developments of the Sport Gastein and Skizentrum Angertal areas have sustained tourism since the 1980s.
2011 – The Top Twenty.
2011 has been an odd year. I’ve ‘explored’ 62 new locations in 5 different countries, admittedly a much lower haul than 2010, but probably a more exciting and intense one. Marc, Gary, Neb and Patch appear to have been my main ‘partners in grime’ this season, but notable mentions need to go to Dan, Brad, Otter, Chris, John and NC Kapita for their involvement, particularly in getting abroad to Norway, Hungary, France and Austria and biting the bullet when we needed to in these places.
The advent and growth of the LCC has provided support in various ways and the open communication that appears to be evolving has made exploring in this country a joy again. Thanks of course due to all that’s been involved. We’ve slept in several bizarre locations both home and abroad and had various interactions with the police and other authorities – all part of the job.
Below is my list of personal favourites, taken solely from places which were new to me in 2011. Read the rest of this entry »
Londonsplore
December 2011
Buk put together a long awaited explorer gathering and dubbed it Londonsplore. With the derelict location and expectation of an all-nighter , the event echoed other enticing social urban experiences from the previous 12 months or so. Somewhere along the line somebody had said that having more parties would be a good thing and everybody seemed to gain an experience from this one. I don’t know what kept us waiting so long really – complacency maybe? Read the rest of this entry »