Me and Rooks got slightly lucky here, heading over to Margate for Dreamland we heard that the Lido was open too. Its allways entrigued me since i first heard of it as theres alot more than meets the eye going on down there!
From what i can work out the pool was built on the cliff side incorporating some original caves and smugglers tunnels that go back inland a few hundered meters and link up with another set of caves called the Vortigerns. The lidos tidal pools were filled in with sand at some point but the underground changing rooms still remain intact and are very much simlar to a massive colliery bath house! Above the changing rooms things get strange! You head back into the cliff and up thorough verious tunnels, snakeing your way through the rotten remains of plant rooms and pumping stations, at one point doing a walk of death over a deep tank used to hold flood water from the lower levels. The top few levels of the abandoned area were used as a night club, an 80s as fuck one at that! This part didnt interest me as much but there were still alot of tunnels to explore where people had smashed through old partitions to reveal more bits of cave and strange arched passageways. Probably the weirdest bit of all is the underground harbor which i think was used for peddlos and small boat hire at some point! :crazy
We didnt find the smugglers tunnels to get back the to Vortigern caves but luckly you can access those from the other end and they have a whole lot of history of thier own with thier old murals and weird bricked up tunnels so ive included them too. Some of the stuff thats claimed of them must be myth, they were open as a silly tourist attraction for a while but who knows!
From what i can work out the pool was built on the cliff side incorporating some original caves and smugglers tunnels that go back inland a few hundered meters and link up with another set of caves called the Vortigerns. The lidos tidal pools were filled in with sand at some point but the underground changing rooms still remain intact and are very much simlar to a massive colliery bath house! Above the changing rooms things get strange! You head back into the cliff and up thorough verious tunnels, snakeing your way through the rotten remains of plant rooms and pumping stations, at one point doing a walk of death over a deep tank used to hold flood water from the lower levels. The top few levels of the abandoned area were used as a night club, an 80s as fuck one at that! This part didnt interest me as much but there were still alot of tunnels to explore where people had smashed through old partitions to reveal more bits of cave and strange arched passageways. Probably the weirdest bit of all is the underground harbor which i think was used for peddlos and small boat hire at some point! :crazy
We didnt find the smugglers tunnels to get back the to Vortigern caves but luckly you can access those from the other end and they have a whole lot of history of thier own with thier old murals and weird bricked up tunnels so ive included them too. Some of the stuff thats claimed of them must be myth, they were open as a silly tourist attraction for a while but who knows!
undergroundkent said:
