Dirty Military – November 2007
Military stuff doesn’t tend to get my juices flowing. Mostly because it’s usually pretty ancient and made of concrete, or because it smells of piss. Cold War Concrete was great fun in Germany, Russian Choppers in Belgium interesting, and there’s still stuff the Nazis left behind that I want to see out in Germany. But in the Uk, it’s never grabbed my attention.
We got up at what seemed like 5am to get out to Old Woking AA base, which was dissapointingly a big concrete box in a field. Rewind 50 years, put the gun back in there and then call me up for a play… Holy grail this ain’t!
We left this freezing cold box in a field and then went to Oxshott ROC post. While there may have been 1,600 of these in the country at one point, and other explorers may spend weekends hitting 20+ of these getting excited about ‘back to front’ examples, one is enough for me.
As you can see, this is a dark box filled with a rancid mattress and a load of scrawlings from what I’d hope is the bored youth of Oxshott.
A short drive to Weybridge followed, with two ROC posts on the Radar, but sadly neither within grasp. One was in a farm covered in Foot and Mouth warning signs, and the other one was probably in a compound in a Gun Club, but there was also every chance that it wasn’t there at all, given the amount of smashed concrete in the area. Also it was a gay porn den, and there were also used condoms and discarded tissues in the area as well. Not nice…
Obviously, as we didn’t find either of these, we didn’t go in them, and therefore have no photos….
Longcross Barracks was for some reason left by the army, and as such, were suitable for exploring. We managed to get into most of the emptied buildings, but didn’t get excited by any of it. The place was stripped and not interesting architecturally. We returned a year later to have a picnic after a visit to Cane Hill. That was more fun I think!
