It's been a long time since I last explored somewhere, over a month and a half which for me is quite a long break. Truth be told I'm not as full of the 'get up and go' I once was, there seems to be a particular dry spell going on for me recently as nothing I've seen online has given me that instant 'drop everything to go see this now' feeling at all. My weekends haven't been boring though as I've had plenty of other stuff going on to keep myself occupied - work, racing, and general life things.
Anyway I thouht I'd organise a little local half day out with @Grom checking out some stuff around Oxfordshire which I've neglected through general forgetfulness, and the biggest one and only real proper success of the day was the large DAF trucks site on the outskirts of Thame. DAF occupied around half of the Kingsmead Business Park site since 1990, with the other half taken up by multiple units leased to companies such as Kubota, Thrifty etc. DAF moved to a new site in neighbouring Haddenham in 2018 and the rest of the businesses moved out soon after, planning permission has been in place for a new residential development on site for a while now but nothing has come of it.
I first looked at this place maybe two years ago not long after it had closed but it was very well secured. That most definitely isn't the case now, which came as a nice surprise. It's been smashed about a fair bit in some areas but other parts are surprisingly intact - and whilst there's not a whole left inside from it's previous life there are a smattering of things to remind you it used to be a big DAF business.
I currently don't have access to my regular wide angle lens or tripod (long story to be sorted soon) so I was limited to just my phone camera and it's own in-built wide angle mode for the most part. It coped pretty well I thought.
Moving into the long building at the back leased to other companies. The largest part of it was home to Kubota.
I have to say the weirdest part of the whole explore was the ridiculous amount of microwaves dumped throughout the buildings. There must have been someone storing an industrial quantity of home microwaves in there at some point before it closed and they've ended up spread through the whole site, thrown around and made a mess of. It was bizarre.
Thanks for looking
Anyway I thouht I'd organise a little local half day out with @Grom checking out some stuff around Oxfordshire which I've neglected through general forgetfulness, and the biggest one and only real proper success of the day was the large DAF trucks site on the outskirts of Thame. DAF occupied around half of the Kingsmead Business Park site since 1990, with the other half taken up by multiple units leased to companies such as Kubota, Thrifty etc. DAF moved to a new site in neighbouring Haddenham in 2018 and the rest of the businesses moved out soon after, planning permission has been in place for a new residential development on site for a while now but nothing has come of it.
I first looked at this place maybe two years ago not long after it had closed but it was very well secured. That most definitely isn't the case now, which came as a nice surprise. It's been smashed about a fair bit in some areas but other parts are surprisingly intact - and whilst there's not a whole left inside from it's previous life there are a smattering of things to remind you it used to be a big DAF business.
I currently don't have access to my regular wide angle lens or tripod (long story to be sorted soon) so I was limited to just my phone camera and it's own in-built wide angle mode for the most part. It coped pretty well I thought.
Moving into the long building at the back leased to other companies. The largest part of it was home to Kubota.
I have to say the weirdest part of the whole explore was the ridiculous amount of microwaves dumped throughout the buildings. There must have been someone storing an industrial quantity of home microwaves in there at some point before it closed and they've ended up spread through the whole site, thrown around and made a mess of. It was bizarre.
Thanks for looking
well done both
