First explore of 2019 after a long break from exploring after I changed jobs (again) and ran out of enough spare time to go wandering! This place was quite a treat! Met up with my good friend @Proxy23 and a friend of hers and off we went to this place! Access to the site was much easier than expected. After a little mooch around the site to check for security we found our way in, joining up with another group of explorers on the way. We were informed that security is sometimes present on site so it does appear that we got lucky as we had a whole 3 hours here with no disturbances!
I couldn't find much history on the place but loved the 70s feel of the internal fixtures and fittings. The place closed down in 2010 with a decline in usage after another more up to date leisure centre was built in Watford. The land was leased from HSBC, which owned a management training centre on the same site. This too is now empty, but the buildings are all very well sealed and appear to be alarmed, so we did not gain access to these. The lower floors were also flooded and as none of us had wellies with us, we were unable to access those which meant the changing rooms and pumping room was off limits. The lower floors had a strong smell of mould so a respirator wouldn't be a bad shout for that area. As we didn't have those with us either, we left them alone. The water was only a few inches deep but there were clear tide marks showing where it had been at least a foot deep at some point!
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I couldn't find much history on the place but loved the 70s feel of the internal fixtures and fittings. The place closed down in 2010 with a decline in usage after another more up to date leisure centre was built in Watford. The land was leased from HSBC, which owned a management training centre on the same site. This too is now empty, but the buildings are all very well sealed and appear to be alarmed, so we did not gain access to these. The lower floors were also flooded and as none of us had wellies with us, we were unable to access those which meant the changing rooms and pumping room was off limits. The lower floors had a strong smell of mould so a respirator wouldn't be a bad shout for that area. As we didn't have those with us either, we left them alone. The water was only a few inches deep but there were clear tide marks showing where it had been at least a foot deep at some point!
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