2011 was a great year that saw me exploring lots of amazing places but it ended on a bit disappointing note as all the carefully planned Christmas Day explores turned to fails one after another. It drained my enthusiasm for a while, so to snap out of my mild depression and to get the ball rolling in 2012 I turned my eyes to something that's been on the list for ages but only recently became worthwhile. What's more dodgy than live tube tunnels? Olympic Park 6 months before the Games?! Behold the Orbit Tower.
I reccied the site and soon enough found an access spot that was so blatant that I needed to show it to Smalls to get a second opinion. A while later we came back to check it together.
The perimeter fence has receded in places and some areas that were still a construction site when we visited a year ago are now accessible to the public. It was fun to walk along our old access route, legally and during the day, and remember how we had to slowly crawl in the dark last time we were in the same place.
Soon enough we approached the access. It was so blatant that our first thought was "where is the catch?" The spot was in plain view of a dozen of CCTV cameras, so our conclusion was that they must be enough of a protection. Which meant they were either monitored 24/7 (not likely given the enormous number of cams on site) or there was some sort of motion recognising software in place that automatically alerted security in case of intruders (seemed very likely to me).
The other problem with our access spot was that it gave no chance of bailing if shit hit the fan. If we'd got spotted jumping in, there was no way we would have been able to jump out and run away - there was nowhere to run.
We contemplated the whole thing for a week or so. It seemed to be a suicide mission - running past some high-tech motion detecting cameras into the Olympic Park only to be caught 60 secs later by seccas in a jeep, handed over to the cops, strip searched, jailed then maybe have a house raided and/or a camera confiscated for months. On the other hand I knew that if we stepped down from a challenge the thought of Orbit Tower would haunt me for months.
Without getting into too much details - we decided to bite the bullet. We went for it, we reached the tower and we got out undetected. I was 90% sure we'd get caught, but we didn't.
It was an awesome exploration, unfortunately my pictures aren't as good as they could be. The Tower is quite difficult to photograph while you're on top and tbh I had such a good time being there that I didn't care too much about "documenting" the place. But here's a few pics that I got:
^ Already past the fence but still far from the Tower. We hid under a truck and took a few quick snaps.
Closer...
General view over Stratford
The Stadium
info: Wikipedia
It was my second visit to the land of electrified fences and I was much more stressed than the first time round. Last explores that we knew of had happened more than a year ago, so security wise a lot could have changed - undoubtedly for the worse. The buildings all look finished, there's much less equipment and building materials scattered around. There's zillions of CCTV cameras with infra red floodlights, located literally every 4-5 meters, so "finding a blind spot" just wasn't an option. There are seccas with dogs, unpassable fences, canals to cross etc. etc.I reccied the site and soon enough found an access spot that was so blatant that I needed to show it to Smalls to get a second opinion. A while later we came back to check it together.
The perimeter fence has receded in places and some areas that were still a construction site when we visited a year ago are now accessible to the public. It was fun to walk along our old access route, legally and during the day, and remember how we had to slowly crawl in the dark last time we were in the same place.
Soon enough we approached the access. It was so blatant that our first thought was "where is the catch?" The spot was in plain view of a dozen of CCTV cameras, so our conclusion was that they must be enough of a protection. Which meant they were either monitored 24/7 (not likely given the enormous number of cams on site) or there was some sort of motion recognising software in place that automatically alerted security in case of intruders (seemed very likely to me).
The other problem with our access spot was that it gave no chance of bailing if shit hit the fan. If we'd got spotted jumping in, there was no way we would have been able to jump out and run away - there was nowhere to run.
We contemplated the whole thing for a week or so. It seemed to be a suicide mission - running past some high-tech motion detecting cameras into the Olympic Park only to be caught 60 secs later by seccas in a jeep, handed over to the cops, strip searched, jailed then maybe have a house raided and/or a camera confiscated for months. On the other hand I knew that if we stepped down from a challenge the thought of Orbit Tower would haunt me for months.
Without getting into too much details - we decided to bite the bullet. We went for it, we reached the tower and we got out undetected. I was 90% sure we'd get caught, but we didn't.
It was an awesome exploration, unfortunately my pictures aren't as good as they could be. The Tower is quite difficult to photograph while you're on top and tbh I had such a good time being there that I didn't care too much about "documenting" the place. But here's a few pics that I got:
^ Already past the fence but still far from the Tower. We hid under a truck and took a few quick snaps.
Closer...
On top
General view over Stratford
The Stadium
