Report - Pocock Brothers Padded Cell - Haslar Psychiatric Block - Nov 2014

[Speed]

I've been exploring for about 4 years and there are a few places I've been to several times, a few places I've been the first to get into, and some well traveled places I've visited. I don't post much at all, but I regularly check the forums to see if there's anything new around me, but I know 3 or 4 places that no one's managed around here. I know that I can't find any access to these new places, however. To some extent people need to follow the tourist trails and learn from that. It seems ridiculous toexpect everyone in the scene to go out and explore these amazing new places that no one's seen before. If you want to explore in a reasonably safe way, then you need to start simple. Find the places that you can have a decent idea about for 20 different reports. As has been said, any photos taken will be the same photos that have been posted 20 times, but that's an inevitability.
I for one, and I imagine it's the same for others, simply don't have the time to conduct extensive research on new and exciting explores. I know that realistically the only way I'm getting into any of the places I've got my eye on is if someone else out there who is frankly 'better' than I am gets in and is kind enough to share some insight into how it's possible. It's impossible to learn what you're doing without to some extent being a sheep.

Some fair points. All I would say is post those places in the leads and rumors section and you have done more than your fair share. You dont have to devote your life to exploring to contribute. You don't have to find a padded cell to be a real explorer that fact that you have noticed something new is all it takes.

What I don't like seeing is all the people out there doing week long trips to Belgium to see tourist locations yet while the derelict factory in their own home town gets missed as they don't even bother to look . It happens all the time.

 

[Oxygen Thief]

mffp - I'd like to make the same sort of point as Speed - you say you know some places - post them up as leads. That's where a lot of explores originate from.

 

[lesbub]

It does happen - because that is what they choose to do.......

 

[Speed]

Yeh and those kind of people are not welcome. That's my point!

 

[UrbanDuck]

Have enjoyed the debate but more so the photographs, hope it stays around long enough for others to enjoy.

 

[Fudge]

Are you off your head? Some of the densest industrial and urban heritage of England is tied up in those mills, chimneys and 5 story rooftops. It's not about epic, it's about seeing new things and showing them to people who might be interested in them.

And don't tell tweek you said that, he'll deck you.

It was said in jest, don't worry :P

PS accidental thumbs down after thumbs up

 

[m9]

I don't really care who explores what/with/why etc, I just know why I do it and that's all matters to me.

Then why are you joining in the debate?

 

[m9]

To make the point that it really shouldn't matter where other people go, why they go, who they go with. What difference does it actually make? Everyone should just focus on themselves. Evidently, I didn't make that clear with my initial post. My bad.

It definitely makes a difference! Without competition, sharing of knowledge, mutual trust, friendship and good old fashioned rivalry, 80% of what we now consider to be the jazz-standards of UK UE wouldn't have been done. The tube/UK underground, KTE, MR, Burly, the LCPD powerstations god knows what else. This whole scene in fact, is based on these things, and if everyone had been just focusing on themselves we'd basically have no forums, no internet shopping lists and no place to start for anyone wanting to get into it.

 

[Lord Oort]

My 2p for what its worth.

As a newbie who is trying very hard to get up to speed (pun not intended) I am very grateful for the tourist trail at the moment, it gives me somewhere safe to practice my photography and still see come cool shit while I'm doing it. Once I'm more familiar with finding and accessing places I intend to start branching out into the more off the beaten track explores.

I agree that everyone who is into this should make an effort, how much of an effort is obviously up to them but as long as some is made then it's all good. As it stands the site seems to work well with filtering out the less sensible/motivated explorers, the only problem is that they then bugger off to facebook et al...

Looking at some of the other urbex sites around the web I can totally understand why this thread got started (other than the rather cool pics of course)

My bottom line is that if you join a community (any community) and don't give a little back then you're not going to get very far and that is right.

 

[Oxygen Thief]

It definitely makes a difference! Without competition, sharing of knowledge, mutual trust, friendship and good old fashioned rivalry, 80% of what we now consider to be the jazz-standards of UK UE wouldn't have been done. The tube/UK underground, KTE, MR, Burly, the LCPD powerstations god knows what else. This whole scene in fact, is based on these things, and if everyone had been just focusing on themselves we'd basically have no forums, no internet shopping lists and no place to start for anyone wanting to get into it.

You said the 'C' word.... Competition. I don't know why the majority of 'explorers' fear this. Probably either because they can't, won't, incapable or simply haven't experienced it before.

There's nothing better than dropping a set of set of pictures like a bomb... Look. At. This.

My 2p for what its worth.

As a newbie who is trying very hard to get up to speed (pun not intended) I am very grateful for the tourist trail at the moment, it gives me somewhere safe to practice my photography and still see come cool shit while I'm doing it. Once I'm more familiar with finding and accessing places I intend to start branching out into the more off the beaten track explores.

I agree that everyone who is into this should make an effort, how much of an effort is obviously up to them but as long as some is made then it's all good. As it stands the site seems to work well with filtering out the less sensible/motivated explorers, the only problem is that they then bugger off to facebook et al...

Looking at some of the other urbex sites around the web I can totally understand why this thread got started (other than the rather cool pics of course)

My bottom line is that if you join a community (any community) and don't give a little back then you're not going to get very far and that is right.

A very sensible attitude, and nobody would expect more. You have to gain experience and confidence. But, it's as simple as walking down your usual route in Box, and saying "I wonder what's over those deads" and having a look.

There's no 'serious' exploring on facebook, that's a joke really. Anything that gets posted on there 1) isn't of any use or help to anyone, and 2) disappears into unnamed obscurity the minute it leaves the top of the page. Absolutely pointless and crap.

...What it doesn't need is elitism, egos and idiocy.

I'd rather see more of that and less gas masks, HDR and art shit tourism.

 

[Speed]

At least this thread has been a lot more enjoyable and interesting (for me at least) than just getting a load of replys along the line of 'great pics mate' and 'cool find'

 

[Oxygen Thief]

At least this thread has been a lot more enjoyable and interesting (for me at least) than just getting a load of replys along the line of 'great pics mate' and 'cool find'

Speed, your a moderators nightmare.

 

[m9]

But you don't actually NEED any of those things to get started in this game. A lot of people certainly didn't, myself included because those things didn't exist or were in their infancy when starting to wander around derelict buildings.

Which is true, but it's what pushes things forward and makes it more than just a bunch of disconnected derpers. I don't want to get too self-important, but the stuff put up on peoples blogs and on forums play a massive part in delivering relevant hyper-local history to a lot of people, and as a side product of our adventures we get to give something back to tonnes of people up and down the country. This culture has filled a massive gap in the historical records for about 1900 - present, and made it normal for anyone to access detailed photos of the insides of city infrastructure and culturally significant but abandoned buildings and we should be pretty proud of that.

Urban Exploration isn't what it used to be, it's changed dramatically over the last however many years and not necessarily for the better in my opinion.

There are more prats and gasmasks as it's gotten way bigger but the stuff we're doing now makes some of the 'epics' of yesteryear look tame as fuck, and that's not even looking eastwards to the former soviet block where they're absolutely smashing it. This is all down to natural growth and sharing of knowledge, which would be stuffed without a collective mind, ie - a scene, to support it.

What it doesn't need is elitism, egos and idiocy.

Someone else's elitism, ego and idiocy is what got me and 200000 other chumps into the KTE last year. I'm grateful for it.



Speed's original gripe about there not being enough people out doing new stuff still stands. I hope i'm out of touch with a lot of the scene, but the fact I can count on two hands the people who do things in this country I admire is a pretty sad reflection of where we're at. Another pretty stark reflection of this is that the interesting and creative heads of the scene a few years ago that used to dominate everything have gotten sick of it and just stopped posting because of swamping of the scene with hopeless wetwipes who think 'research' is googling for that weekends desirable concatenated with the words 'Urbex' and 'Location'.

 

[dweeb]

So we get to the seventh page and I feel like I might have a say now...

I've been looking for new stuff for over a decade now, made some half decent finds over the years and brought every one of them to the table. It sometimes annoys me that people seem to love going to see the stuff we find, but a lot of the time there isn't the same list for me to follow when I fancy straying from the home city.

A few years ago there would be key players in most regions of the UK, a few good locations would crop up and we would then make the decision to bundle in the car, meet with said explorer/s and spend the day touring what they had uncovered in their city. A good example would be the countless weekends we had in Liverpool with Snapple or in the North west with people like Host & co.

I don't feel like saying everyone is shit or that everyone should be like me, I look for new stuff because I want to see cool shit and I hate cool shit getting missed out on so we only find out about it when it's a smoking pile or rubble.

If you've had great weekends in the past exploring stuff that caught your eye on here, and you've found something yourself, I just think it would be nice for you to post it up so other people can have great weekends on the fruits of other folks labour. It's tedious when you do a 400 mile road trip and get in nowt because your just checking a list of leads. A few sites you know look like a decent mooch dotted down the list makes for a better trip.

Shall we all just get on now...??

 

[The Kwan]

So now we find ourselves at the end of 2014 nearly 5 years later. Yes that FIVE whole years! Countless people have followed me to Haslar but i can honestly say in that time ive not seen a single photo of anything we didn't see on our first 'quick recce'. For me its fucking disgrace to exploring how this place has gone. 5 YEARS and nothing. No reports of new outbuildings, Mortuarys, Towers, Churches, Boiler hoses, Tunnels, Wards oh yes and the fucking padded cell that's been sitting there all along just waiting for a REAL EXPLORER to open the fucking unlocked window and have a look whats inside the 'quite intriguingly named on every fire map in the place Psychiatric Block'.. When i first posted Haslar i expected people to be there exploring it not following me taking the same pictures i took and walking round the same corridors i found. I expected people to go there and do the rest, it was a golden opportunity (and still is for the most part!) for some local southern base explorers to get in there and find some shit for once but no its left to some guys from Birmingham to go down there and get it done and you know what after i press 'post thread' on this keys will be jangling in a thousand pockets of a thousand chumps who think going here and seeing what we saw yesterday is exploring. Masks or no masks, HDR or no HDR is simply isnt. Its tourism and its SHIT. Its following other people about to see what they found and to take the same photos as they took to show everyone else sweet fuck all they haven't seen before. Its pointless. Sure go here and see it. I urge you to, its probably your last chance but spare us the reams and reams of copy cat reports and 'art shots' because no one cares, you have missed the chance to truly feel lie you have explored, discovered, beaten everyone else to it or what ever else SHOULD motivate explorers.

So maybe i should stop winging now [/CENTER]

Speed, A reciprocal thumbs down from me mate, the first one that I have ever given but after reading the above quote AGAIN, I could hardly press the thumbs down button between full on lolling and cringing for you mate, yes CRINGING. So you asked for debate and then thumbs down when it presents itself. At the end of the day Speed, you aint come out of this very well and you could have presented this in a far more palatable way which would have sparked decent debate instead of attracting flack for your abrasive stance and then complaining that the mods were stifling your debate by deleting posts...more lolling here I am afraid Speed, and whilst I fully understand your very badly made point you seem to have changed your stance from one of explorers being not being REAL EXPLORERS to one of people not sharing and furthering the community.
Let me tell you Speed, I know people who are real explorers and done stuff probably as much or perhaps even more than you but dont "whinge" to use your own words, Also Speed, you forgot to mention the fun and kinship that these not real explorers enjoy when on a euro trip or perhaps a trip to see some tourist attraction..good for them. May I suggest that the other five or so real explorers that were mentioned get a room
I am happy to pick the bones out of this with you mate now that I am not posting on a telephone,lets start with your original intent and why you felt it necessary to falsly Big yourself up.