It has been some since we crossed the channel or continents to see some of the primo dereliction there. This report may be defined as picture heavy I’m afraid, so Ojay, look away now. There’ll be some full reports in the coming weeks.
6 months in the planning, a shedload of research done and some help from close friends meant that there was a healthy selection of things that we had to see, centralising primarily, as usual, around the heavy industry in Belgium & Germany.
Now, some of the things here were leads, not having seen photos or knowing if they were do-able, or indeed what they even were. Most of which we knew were there but had absolutely no idea of how to get into them, however, Belgium being Belgium, this is generally a simple affair.
Anyway, boring boring… MJS, Cregg and I set off for the channel tunnel singing songs etc and a good run to Folkestone meant we had time to stop off in Bruges for some chips and mayo - bonus.
Chips scoffed, we popped into this power station, with turbine at idle. It was absolutely boiling and extremely noisy.
Afterwards we hooked up with Camera Shy and our pal Gloaked up who’d suffered a non terminal breakdown of their car leading to a slight delay…
Bedding down in a layby (that appeared quiet in the middle of the night) we were awoken by quarry trucks thundering past our heads… onwards to a cafe filled with Belgians drinking beer for breakfast for a swift coffee and into one of those half religious / half hospital type buildings they seem to have a fondness for in Belgium.
We headed towards the industrial heartland of the Meuse valley via a fairly interesting derelict church with a cool bell tower.
And to somewhere that has been named “Alla italia” which is a derelict ex-thermal spa. The entrance hall has an attractive ceiling and there was a fairly nice boiler, although the rest of it was probably as meh as derp come. This was the scene of both Mr. Shy and I piercing our feet on a spike (Lynn etc…)
Painful feet and the weather being fairly shite saw us retire to our odd little hotel where there was a boatload of Jupiler to be drunk.
Haut Furneau B is the smaller, more secure brother of http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums...ast-Furnace-HF6-Belgium-March-2014?highlight= The story is much the same as HF6 with the site closing in 2012. There’s a bit of graffiti here and there but everything is pretty much untouched with steam pipes still hissing and electricity here and there. We spent all morning here and could have spent longer - absolutely fantastic.
Any derp with a live train line through the middle is good by me.
Then a powerplant which I’d not seen before, a nice surprise although an intense ballache to get into.
Another find, what I’ve called Salle de Compresseurs as that’s what it was, a compressor hall with a couple of little turbines and localised controls. Brilliantly decayed and again, completely un-molested.
A further powerplant, uncovered by James earlier this year, I’ve struggled to find more than one or two photos of this online. Extremely secure and again requiring a couple of hours of effort to actually get into the turbine hall, it was well worth it to see in the early evening sun.
There are two buildings here, one being the boiler house and the other the turbine hall. The boiler arrangement has flues directly to the roof rather than an external chimney stack with a “loft” housing these enormous concrete clad exhausts.
Turbine hall
Controls.
Having spent a couple of years exploring the Ruhr’s coal mines in 2011 and 2012, I’d got wind of one of the Ruhr’s mega mines closing down and had kept tabs on happenings over there.
A couple of photos popped up online and this trip was planned mainly around seeing this… We hooked up with our good friend Pierre and headed over. It needed a couple of goes at actually getting on the site past the marauding security gents with their umbrellas and a couple of hours of navigating through pitch black washers and conveyors to see the winding gear (13 stories tall) and the enormous changing Kaue (cage room)
More photos to follow in subsequent reports.
6 months in the planning, a shedload of research done and some help from close friends meant that there was a healthy selection of things that we had to see, centralising primarily, as usual, around the heavy industry in Belgium & Germany.
Now, some of the things here were leads, not having seen photos or knowing if they were do-able, or indeed what they even were. Most of which we knew were there but had absolutely no idea of how to get into them, however, Belgium being Belgium, this is generally a simple affair.
Anyway, boring boring… MJS, Cregg and I set off for the channel tunnel singing songs etc and a good run to Folkestone meant we had time to stop off in Bruges for some chips and mayo - bonus.
Chips scoffed, we popped into this power station, with turbine at idle. It was absolutely boiling and extremely noisy.
Afterwards we hooked up with Camera Shy and our pal Gloaked up who’d suffered a non terminal breakdown of their car leading to a slight delay…
Bedding down in a layby (that appeared quiet in the middle of the night) we were awoken by quarry trucks thundering past our heads… onwards to a cafe filled with Belgians drinking beer for breakfast for a swift coffee and into one of those half religious / half hospital type buildings they seem to have a fondness for in Belgium.
We headed towards the industrial heartland of the Meuse valley via a fairly interesting derelict church with a cool bell tower.
And to somewhere that has been named “Alla italia” which is a derelict ex-thermal spa. The entrance hall has an attractive ceiling and there was a fairly nice boiler, although the rest of it was probably as meh as derp come. This was the scene of both Mr. Shy and I piercing our feet on a spike (Lynn etc…)
Painful feet and the weather being fairly shite saw us retire to our odd little hotel where there was a boatload of Jupiler to be drunk.
Haut Furneau B is the smaller, more secure brother of http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums...ast-Furnace-HF6-Belgium-March-2014?highlight= The story is much the same as HF6 with the site closing in 2012. There’s a bit of graffiti here and there but everything is pretty much untouched with steam pipes still hissing and electricity here and there. We spent all morning here and could have spent longer - absolutely fantastic.
Any derp with a live train line through the middle is good by me.
Then a powerplant which I’d not seen before, a nice surprise although an intense ballache to get into.
Another find, what I’ve called Salle de Compresseurs as that’s what it was, a compressor hall with a couple of little turbines and localised controls. Brilliantly decayed and again, completely un-molested.
A further powerplant, uncovered by James earlier this year, I’ve struggled to find more than one or two photos of this online. Extremely secure and again requiring a couple of hours of effort to actually get into the turbine hall, it was well worth it to see in the early evening sun.
There are two buildings here, one being the boiler house and the other the turbine hall. The boiler arrangement has flues directly to the roof rather than an external chimney stack with a “loft” housing these enormous concrete clad exhausts.
Turbine hall
Controls.
Having spent a couple of years exploring the Ruhr’s coal mines in 2011 and 2012, I’d got wind of one of the Ruhr’s mega mines closing down and had kept tabs on happenings over there.
A couple of photos popped up online and this trip was planned mainly around seeing this… We hooked up with our good friend Pierre and headed over. It needed a couple of goes at actually getting on the site past the marauding security gents with their umbrellas and a couple of hours of navigating through pitch black washers and conveyors to see the winding gear (13 stories tall) and the enormous changing Kaue (cage room)
More photos to follow in subsequent reports.
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