Cane Hill, Surrey the "Mini Break" - 20/21/22 Oct, 06

[paulo999]

Well, it had to happen one day. The full Friday night to Sunday night Cane Hill weekender.

Friday night I meet Nurse Payne at Euston. Back to mine to print maps, discuss the plan, and load up backpacks. The last thing we want to happen is to get driven out by running out of something critical, rather than by simply being busted. During our short trip to Battersea we ran out of water and I ran out of cigs. So this time, with a whole weekend in mind: We had 4.5 litres of water between us. Three packs of smokes for me. Some sandwiches, chocolate... and, err, a Carrot - that Payno brought "for seeing in the dark". Awww bless.

The final addition was a hastily made 50-50 cocktail of gin and some random synthetic tasting raspberry stuff which was all we had to hand. The final potion looked like meths and was probably going to taste as bad. Terrible use of a bottle of Bombay Sapphire, but hey, as needs must and all that.

So off we head... ambling out of the station and going past security on the other side of the road. Seeing the silhoutted figures against the lights of the hut, "Cane Hill Security" paranoia hits me. I'm walking like the most guilty man on earth, and Payno is, rightly, berating me. If I ever had any cool, I'd certainly lost it at that point.

Half an hour later we are making our way through some bushes. Payno first. Suddenly she's gesturing, with an alarmed expression on her face. We've come to the edge of one of the tracks and oh dear look at this - we're face to face with a car, lights off, pointing directly at us. We don't really know if it's security or the Croydon dogging scene but we're not going to hang around to find out. We do a swift 180, crawling back into the woods.

Finally we're lined up at our entry point. We give ourselves a minute or so to ready ourselves... "Ready? Go now? YES"... we get up and run like fuck.

A little while later we are in the ground floor of a ward. It's pitch black. It ought to be time to celebrate - for me at least, being a CH virgin - but finding somewhere to sleep is first on the list. We poke around trying to find a balance between not using any light, and not disappearing downstairs via an "express route."

Finally we find a good spot upstairs and make camp. We're IN! Oh lordy. So now all we are faced with is 40ish hours of trying to avoid being busted. I'm also faced with opening the meths - yay! And Payno is faced with hitting me every so often during the night - boo!. She claims I was snoring, but I didn't hear a thing.

[TO BE CONTINUED - Photos to follow immediately though]

Full Photo Set Here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulholmes/sets/72157594340379358/)

[paulo999]

Dawn...

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The middle section of "Vincent Van"...

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A bit of "shot theft" from payno...

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Faraday, top floor:

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Underneath the bed frame is a "night duty" sheet

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[paulo999]

To keep our stay as planned, we'd avoided the hot spots. But payno insisted on a trip to the mortuary. Which really would have been futile, without help. Luckily we had a "commander in chief" off site. Full credits soon. :)

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[paulo999]

Saturday...

Morning comes. The dawn chorus is a competition between Cane Hill security dogs. Dog A: "I am the barkingest dog of Cane Hill. BARK BARK BARK!". Dog B: "No, I am the barkingest dog of Cane Hill. BARK BARK BARK !". The nearby barking competition goes on for about an hour. Technically we're pinned down, but actually all we do is wander round in the ward we are in and get photos. Cane Hill at dawn looks great. Finally the competition is over. I don't know who won. It sounded like a draw to me. And so to day one of exploring.

The day before, in all the excitement, I'd not not eaten since lunch. Last night's dinner was two cans of stella whilst peering at maps. So now I've decided that the sandwich earmarked for lunch will be the victim of a hostile takeover bid, called "breakfast". This will leave me two packs of sandwiches. I say packs - they are now beginning to become, ummm, somewhat more compact, nestling in the backpack alongside the camera, the water mountain, and the final bottle of meths. Exploring food is bad, and now this is worse. At some point maybe I'll end up eating moss or something.

We work our way south through the male wards. This is a low stress affair. It's easy to stay mainly upstairs, away from the "badness" outside, and just indulge in taking shots. We're not in any rush. In fact we couldn't have rushed anyway - Payno isn't just shooting in RAW, but is perhaps actually writing her pictures down in binary or something. I compensate by indulging in a carefully thought out artistic series, which I've named "Having another smoke."

Sometime after lunch it's time to start heading over to the female side. We work our way up past the kitchen and... oh bollocks, it's the dog barky thing again. We seem to have hit a dead end, where we expect a left turn. Time to take cover and take stock. We have a photo break in some kind of sewing room, text message our off site help, and then come back out to the junction and head into what had appeared to be untracked bushes to nowhere. Kerching!! Corridor!! Kerching!! Laundry!! Hoh yessy. The map was right, I just wasn't believing what I was looking at.

We pass the "Top to Toe" boutique. I guess they must be closed on Saturday afternoons as there's no staff. Not even anyone to ask if I've got a Nectar card. There's something quite surreal about seeing a "shop" like this - it's a poignant reminder that people here couldn't go out into the 'real world'. On the left turn here we see the first barricade - a grill runs across the corridor at the end. With that obstacle out of the way, we head west.

Later on we poke around in a few of the female wards - Dickens first, finally ending up in Faraday as the light is fading. Even though I've been enjoying the bright sunlight earlier, Payno is working the low light to it's advantage.... long exposure, no supplementary lighting... great for those moody shots. The supplementary lighting however, comes in the form of something outside. "Did you see that?" Payno says to me. "The torch?" I reply. "Yes." she says. FUCK, GET UP STAIRS NOW!!

And with that, it's time to chill out and make camp again. It's not completely chilled though - we spend the next hour or so with various little things going on to give us a few spooks. Some fireworks, which at first feel like they are right outside the building. Some odd looking figures on the public footpath. Payno spots a pair of red and blue flashing torches, somewhere outside the fence. But finally the distractions subside. I attempt to eat the sludge-like remains of chicken sandwich, before abandoning it and sharing the meths. And, indeed a bottle of scrumpy - Payno's not very weight efficient choice of alcohol, that she had "given" me earlier in the day. This is the king of giving that means "here, carry this heavy thing around for awhile. I'll get it back off you later".

Sometime later we doze off. I have no idea when. It's dark, we're in Cane Hill, there's another day ahead - and we're not wearing sunglasses. Who cares what the time is?

[paulo999]

Sunday.

"It's day two, in the Cane Hill Household".

It's nine in the morning and we've both managed to get a good night's sleep, unlike Friday. Payno has brought a genius invention with her. Liquid toothpaste, in spray form. As well as being compact, it means you don't have to waste any precious water. This easily makes up for the carrot/see in the dark comedy item.

We spend a good hour and half just shooting in the floor of the ward we had camped out in - the nursing college at the top of Faraday. Lots of goodies to poke around at - books, magazines, bones, the odd reel from the projection room. Then we do some more on the floor below, the one we had raced past the night before, taking cover.

We want to get into Blake, but the corridor is grilled and we don't fancy attempting it from the outside. Onwards then to the equivelent wards on the male side. At St Olav's we are back in range of the hounds, the muffled barking suggesting at least one is in a van at the front of admin. We have had to cross a corridor leading directly to the chapel, so we're now being extra careful. With tension mounting and not that much to shoot, we head back north... can we find the mortuary?

My phone vibrates. I wonder.... is it? Hoh yes it is - our off site guide has come in with the goods. We have mortuary intructions! This pleases Payno no end, although I'm becoming increasingly apprehensive about getting busted and losing photos. But, well, there's no excuse now. It's going to be our last thing to see. Not quite as risky as doing the chapel, but it's our one tourist spot for the weekend.

As we pace out of the back of the laundry, I realise we are walking on a trodden path. This is definitely getting iffy. We turn one corner, then another just in front, and... yayy!! Here it is! Hardly trashed at all, which surprised me. We know we're sailing a little close the wind so we make a quick job of it. Payno even appears to be taking pictures at something close to "a normal speed", which is a first.

Back up north in the male wards, we retread the same path we did after getting in, but this time in the day. OH MY FUCKING CHRIST. We walked across THAT, in the dark. Fuck me. Here, in broad daylight, trying to carefully pick a safe path across, the floor gives on me twice. And with that we abandon the final explore and head back to the exit.

It's getting dark, time to leave. Over the next 20 minutes, I'm about to completely lose the plot. After two days, being pretty much calm even when we'd had close shaves, a series of minor events will send me off into gibbering state I've never experienced before. There's a parked van (avoided), a car (ran away from - turned out to be civvies), losing Payno, getting trapped in barb, two horses running towards me (clamber back over barb), finding Payno again, finishing with assorted security van drive-bys.

Each one was sending my stress levels further upwards. . Payno however is taking all this in her stride. She in fact wants to go down and walk out past security. "Face the devil" was the term I think she used. We walk down the drive and with security driving past and not bothering us I finally start to calm down a bit, but decide that we won't be popping by to wave. Maybe I could send a postcard instead.

Back at Victoria we have the post explore wrap up, Payno satisfies her caffeine addiction whilst I have a much needed couple of beers.

We did it. 40 Hours in Cane Hill.

------ END CREDITS ------

It would be nice to think we'd done it by ourselves. In reality though we wouldn't have stood a chance without a few key people.

Thanks to Ridds for some good general advice about moving around internally, general dos and don'ts, and ideas for access.

And a very very big thanks to Disco, who in effect became our Chief of Operations - giving us some essential info in both planning, and ongoing "on the ground" help during the weekend.
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