Visited with AndyK and Clebby.
Its been a while since ive been inside one of these beasts and ive been putting off a nose at this particular example for ages. When Clebby suggested we should go give it a go it was the perfect excuse to pop up for the evening. Exploring these big stations tends to be a lot about the timing of your visit. Go too early and you will find it wide open but probably still quite well manned, go too late and you will find it locked and bolted, partially stripped and quite probably very dark! What makes it hard is that no two ever share the same time scale. Some seem to close an are deserted within weeks, others have men wandering about in them for years. Some are good at first, then get a bit dark and dodgy only to come good again once the power has been cut and the site totally vacated, some never even get that far! My best power station explores are the ones where we seemed to have got this timing spot on. At Ferrybridge and Ironbridge we were really a bit early. Easy in but too many people about to see everything! Others like Tilbury B we were too late or simply judged the situation wrong and were there at the wrong time of day. Here tho i think we got pretty close to getting things right. Andy had been several times before but the control room, which really is one of the main attractions here was manned each time. This time we arrived to find the site a lot darker and seemingly totally deserted. Getting in was more tricky than previous visits but after a few close calls with new IR cameras and lots of razor wire we made it inside.
The site has now been totally cut off from the grid but luckily they still have several generators on site powering some of the original lights. This was a slight annoyance in parts but over all we got to see everything we wanted to and the dark outside probably made getting in again a whole lot simpler. We started out with a few snaps of the turbines and then headed down into the basement where i was pleasantly surprised to find a whole wealth tasty vintage rooms and epic old signs. We decided to try the control room first as we thought it would be a good indication how well manned the rest was likely to be. After the usual creep up the stairs and peer through the door we found it deserted. Game on! After far to long hanging around that area we were just getting around to leaving when we found the place wasnt quite a deserted as it seemed. A couple of doors banging followed by voices outside the room caused a quick sprint across the room out of the other door and down the front stairs back the way we came. We were lucky there really so once we found ourselves back in the turbine hall we didn't feel like hanging around and bumping into the same guys for a second time and made out way back out. If you pop up here its probably a good idea to remember 12am is tea break time!!
Its been a while since ive been inside one of these beasts and ive been putting off a nose at this particular example for ages. When Clebby suggested we should go give it a go it was the perfect excuse to pop up for the evening. Exploring these big stations tends to be a lot about the timing of your visit. Go too early and you will find it wide open but probably still quite well manned, go too late and you will find it locked and bolted, partially stripped and quite probably very dark! What makes it hard is that no two ever share the same time scale. Some seem to close an are deserted within weeks, others have men wandering about in them for years. Some are good at first, then get a bit dark and dodgy only to come good again once the power has been cut and the site totally vacated, some never even get that far! My best power station explores are the ones where we seemed to have got this timing spot on. At Ferrybridge and Ironbridge we were really a bit early. Easy in but too many people about to see everything! Others like Tilbury B we were too late or simply judged the situation wrong and were there at the wrong time of day. Here tho i think we got pretty close to getting things right. Andy had been several times before but the control room, which really is one of the main attractions here was manned each time. This time we arrived to find the site a lot darker and seemingly totally deserted. Getting in was more tricky than previous visits but after a few close calls with new IR cameras and lots of razor wire we made it inside.
The site has now been totally cut off from the grid but luckily they still have several generators on site powering some of the original lights. This was a slight annoyance in parts but over all we got to see everything we wanted to and the dark outside probably made getting in again a whole lot simpler. We started out with a few snaps of the turbines and then headed down into the basement where i was pleasantly surprised to find a whole wealth tasty vintage rooms and epic old signs. We decided to try the control room first as we thought it would be a good indication how well manned the rest was likely to be. After the usual creep up the stairs and peer through the door we found it deserted. Game on! After far to long hanging around that area we were just getting around to leaving when we found the place wasnt quite a deserted as it seemed. A couple of doors banging followed by voices outside the room caused a quick sprint across the room out of the other door and down the front stairs back the way we came. We were lucky there really so once we found ourselves back in the turbine hall we didn't feel like hanging around and bumping into the same guys for a second time and made out way back out. If you pop up here its probably a good idea to remember 12am is tea break time!!
