The Explore
This was a bit of a naughty boys trip abroad, which had been on the cards for a while. After Dirty Jigsaw & Letchbo had come back from a pretty successful venture to Paris in September, I was pretty jealous & wanted in on the action.
Roll forward a few months & we were making our way over the pond (or under more like). With the Metro being our main focus, we planned to hit a different spot each night, with some filler explores in between (rooftops, Catas etc). We killed some time with recceing a couple of rooftops, as well as taking in some of the normal stuff people go to see while in the capital. The time came & we made our way over to what we thought was going to be an easy explore of Champ de Mars, but lady luck wasn't smiling down on us that day clearly! We waited for the trains to roll in/out, & for that opportunity to make a dash over the boundary. It never came, & the trains kept coming, seemingly after they should have stopped for the night. Finally the last one came.........but as we made our way over we noticed two ticket inspectors coming down the stairs. We stopped in time, & were then told firmly that it was the final train & we had to leave..........I'd say that was a rather close call. Not wanting to admit defeat, we ventured over to the original station entrance by the park. When we got there we noticed that someone had kicked fuck out of the door & it was off it's hinges. We looked at each with excitement, thinking this was our second wind. After checking the coast was clear, we made our way in. Turns out we weren't in luck after all, as we got to the platform level we soon realised that the doors had been welded shut. What made it even worse was the fact that we could see & smell the tunnels from the cracks in the door. Seriously, could you be any more cruel?! We shrugged it off & took the opportunity to record the station building itself, which given it's super graffed/tube grimed/burnt out appearance it was really quite photogenic.
Saturday proved to be a much more successful venture. We had a nice little delve into the catacombs for a few hours, followed immediately by a walk along Le Petite Ceinture. Later we killed some time with a chill out at the hotel, & a nice rooftop in La Defence. The time was once again upon us, & we made our way over to our target station. This time we got it right, arriving with just few trains to spare. We were only waiting about 5 minutes or so, but it felt like an hour. The prospect of crossing that void from the safe public realm, to the dangerous out of bounds was admittedly daunting. A train arrived & people left, but we still weren't alone. A group of girls were standing on the opposite end of the platform chatting & looking our way, which was the only block on an otherwise perfect exit. Suddenly they faced each other in a huddle, & we looked at each other whispering "Now!" We quickly bolted into the darkness, running cautiously over the uneven ballast & railway sleepers. After going for some time we soon came to the next station, but there was no raccord entry to be seen. We were puzzled & a bit panicked by this, & we agreed that we couldn't stick around here. It wouldn't have been so bad, but we'd entered before end of service, & by now the next train was a few minutes away. Luckily we spotted a side passage leading to the slope, & off we shot to the safety of the deep alcoves.
We took a while to get our shit together & took stock of things. We each cracked open a Kronie & looked on at the sight before us. These raccord tunnels are quite special for number of reasons, but what makes this one really special is the fact it's the only one in the system that has a double deck........it was quite something. We assembled & got to work recording our findings, taking all the usual shots. Soon after this we had a bit of a scare, as I heard the bleep of a comm radio & what I thought was the sound of footsteps on the ballast. We froze stiff, trying not to make a noise, wondering how we were going to get ourselves out of this situation, & the possible implications of getting caught! After a while we heard nothing further, & breathed a sigh of relief.
We pressed on through the next station, making a sprint along the platform & down to the next area. This was again a really beautiful bit, with the double racc sloping down & under the next station, with what we spotted were trains laid up inside. This made for some rather nice shots, with lots of graff, wires, signal boxes & other details to focus on. It was at this point we came to a bit of an inpass, as we didn't wanted to go up through another live station & potentially get seen. Yet we were nervous of the prospect of passing the trains. After reading a rather comprehensive report on the Metro, we'd read about the risks with layups. We decided under was probably best, & proceeded carefully into the tunnel, checking for signs of security measures along the way. Turns out that these particular trains had been seemingly dumped there for some time. They were graffed up to hell, there was an open door on the last carriage, & amusingly there was a load of bunting tied to the upper rails of it! Did some peeps have a little party in there perhaps?! We relaxed a bit after seeing this, knowing that we were probably being a bit overcautious with things. All that said, we felt we'd outstayed our welcome, & not wanting to push our luck any further, we skipped taking shots of this area & made our way through.
We eventually got to our exit from the system, well........what we thought would be. To our surprise there was a guy sat on one of the benches at the station, which well & truly threw a spanner in the works. It seemed a bit odd him being there, as he wasn't drunk, he didn't look like a member of staff, he had shopping with him & it was well between closing & opening hours???? Who knows what this guy was doing, but we didn't fancy going past him. So we reluctantly turned back & made the long journey to our point of entry. We made efforts to cut this short, trying other stations along the way, but to no avail. We made our way up & took our first breath of nice Parisian smog, which was a treat after the hours spent inhaling all sorts down below. We'd done it, my first taste of running foreign track (their second) & I'm sure it won't be my last.
It was a tiring tour, & I came back a mere husk of my former self, but I've had some great laughs & seen some incredible things
The pics
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Thanks for looking 
