Well appoligies for keeping everyone hanging some what and special appoligies to Rooks for posting this in parts (you love me really!) It is afterall rather alot to cram into one post eh? Im not trying to string it out but its taking time to write something constructive so bare with me.
Part 4 – Burlington Central War Headquarters
So where did I leave you? Ahh yes the 3 locked doors. Well we will just skim over that bit. Im sure you will all be able to think of your own way into the locked, live, MOD owned, hermetically sealed, cold war nuclear bunker, hidden in a 19th century stone mine with all its entrances either in or within pissing distance of a live military base.
Anyway I jest, we were pretty lucky but we did it. Inside Burlington! I mean wtf has exploring come to? A few years ago when all the asylums ran out people said it was doomed but look at us now! Tube stations, Human Centrefuges! What next? Mail Rail, Big bloody Ben?
So, to the story, for the first night in there we were joined by The raddest of dogs himself. The plan was, meet in Chelmsford at 3, be underground by 6, and have the whole night in there. It did not include Brighton, 3 cups of tea, fixing a Reliant Robin, cake, or getting lost in the new forest but sometimes things don’t go quite to plan.. Inevitably we ended up down there at 11pm needing to be out by 3am so we could get home for work at 6am, all in all a typical night! What’s my point? Well basically we put in a hell of a lot of effort for this, both above ground and below so you can imagine the feeling when it all comes good.
Setting foot in here was weird, we were pretty sure there was no one about after hours but you never know, it wasn’t like ‘dark spring’ where you could hear people coming in the entrance at the other side of the mine. In here the fans were running disguising the approach of who ever may be around the corner. As I said in part 1, I thought I knew what id find in Burlington and I could picture in my head what I was going to see, some of it I saw but a whole lot of it was wrong and a whole lot of stuff turned up that I could never have imagined. The area of spring sectioned off for ‘Subterfuge’ as it was known. (defiantly my favourite of its names) is about 700m x 300m, quite an area. They call it a secret underground city, which in some ways is a bit steep but a secret underground village, yeh I can see that one. What I never realised was the changes it went through during it lifetime and how that impacts on what you find down there.
You can roughly divide the bunker in to east and west sections the east section being dark, abandoned and decayed, decommissioned long in the past. The west section, in contrast, is minty clean, almost fully lit and having an almost surreal ‘time machine’ or ‘museum’ quality to it. Indeed some sections felt like it was all just a surreal mock up. There are a lot of empty rooms that were never fitted out but then huge areas of sublime mintness. Im guessing as the bunker never went into full operation most items stayed in storage until needed and that’s why some areas appear sparse. Some items were probably broken out of there ‘ER’ boxes and brown paper wrapping in later years just to use as props for visitors to get an idea of what was going on but who knows what went on down there exactly?
I suppose I should get on to some photos, im just going to show some general areas in part 4, the major areas deserve a more in depth look. The various roadways named things like ‘North Ring Road’ and ‘South Main Road’ were great but navigating can be a bit confusing with everything signposted by its code number rather then its purpose. One of the highlights of the whole experience was standing at the bottom of ‘East Main Road’ looking west up the hill towards Section 8 (the GPO exchange) a 200m long dead straight view of absolute mind blowing epicness that a single picture could never capture.
The view down East Main Road from the Hospital
Public Lift 2, this looked to be well abandoned, unfortunately we didn’t get a huge amount of chance to investigate it in detail.
Stuck on the ring road again!
Close to Public Lift 1
The other side of PL1 there was a small museum of old mining tools and equipment.
Working Showers
And Toilets
Intersections
Here’s an interesting little room, close to the prime ministers office. This was an area we didn’t cover too well, we didn’t find the BBC studio or public address system or indeed the map room after getting waylaid in other areas. They all appeared to be hidden in a maze of empty unused offices.
Retro signs could be found all over the place.
We found one of the escalators but the other eluded us.
An area ive coined ‘the garage’ where all the electric carts and trains used to service the bunker lived
Service area, first trip the lights were on, next trip they were off.
And finally that view looking up East Main, the longest straight road down there!
Part 4 – Burlington Central War Headquarters
So where did I leave you? Ahh yes the 3 locked doors. Well we will just skim over that bit. Im sure you will all be able to think of your own way into the locked, live, MOD owned, hermetically sealed, cold war nuclear bunker, hidden in a 19th century stone mine with all its entrances either in or within pissing distance of a live military base.
Anyway I jest, we were pretty lucky but we did it. Inside Burlington! I mean wtf has exploring come to? A few years ago when all the asylums ran out people said it was doomed but look at us now! Tube stations, Human Centrefuges! What next? Mail Rail, Big bloody Ben?
So, to the story, for the first night in there we were joined by The raddest of dogs himself. The plan was, meet in Chelmsford at 3, be underground by 6, and have the whole night in there. It did not include Brighton, 3 cups of tea, fixing a Reliant Robin, cake, or getting lost in the new forest but sometimes things don’t go quite to plan.. Inevitably we ended up down there at 11pm needing to be out by 3am so we could get home for work at 6am, all in all a typical night! What’s my point? Well basically we put in a hell of a lot of effort for this, both above ground and below so you can imagine the feeling when it all comes good.
Setting foot in here was weird, we were pretty sure there was no one about after hours but you never know, it wasn’t like ‘dark spring’ where you could hear people coming in the entrance at the other side of the mine. In here the fans were running disguising the approach of who ever may be around the corner. As I said in part 1, I thought I knew what id find in Burlington and I could picture in my head what I was going to see, some of it I saw but a whole lot of it was wrong and a whole lot of stuff turned up that I could never have imagined. The area of spring sectioned off for ‘Subterfuge’ as it was known. (defiantly my favourite of its names) is about 700m x 300m, quite an area. They call it a secret underground city, which in some ways is a bit steep but a secret underground village, yeh I can see that one. What I never realised was the changes it went through during it lifetime and how that impacts on what you find down there.
You can roughly divide the bunker in to east and west sections the east section being dark, abandoned and decayed, decommissioned long in the past. The west section, in contrast, is minty clean, almost fully lit and having an almost surreal ‘time machine’ or ‘museum’ quality to it. Indeed some sections felt like it was all just a surreal mock up. There are a lot of empty rooms that were never fitted out but then huge areas of sublime mintness. Im guessing as the bunker never went into full operation most items stayed in storage until needed and that’s why some areas appear sparse. Some items were probably broken out of there ‘ER’ boxes and brown paper wrapping in later years just to use as props for visitors to get an idea of what was going on but who knows what went on down there exactly?
I suppose I should get on to some photos, im just going to show some general areas in part 4, the major areas deserve a more in depth look. The various roadways named things like ‘North Ring Road’ and ‘South Main Road’ were great but navigating can be a bit confusing with everything signposted by its code number rather then its purpose. One of the highlights of the whole experience was standing at the bottom of ‘East Main Road’ looking west up the hill towards Section 8 (the GPO exchange) a 200m long dead straight view of absolute mind blowing epicness that a single picture could never capture.
The view down East Main Road from the Hospital
Public Lift 2, this looked to be well abandoned, unfortunately we didn’t get a huge amount of chance to investigate it in detail.
Stuck on the ring road again!
Close to Public Lift 1
The other side of PL1 there was a small museum of old mining tools and equipment.
Working Showers
And Toilets
Intersections
Here’s an interesting little room, close to the prime ministers office. This was an area we didn’t cover too well, we didn’t find the BBC studio or public address system or indeed the map room after getting waylaid in other areas. They all appeared to be hidden in a maze of empty unused offices.
Retro signs could be found all over the place.
We found one of the escalators but the other eluded us.
An area ive coined ‘the garage’ where all the electric carts and trains used to service the bunker lived
Service area, first trip the lights were on, next trip they were off.
And finally that view looking up East Main, the longest straight road down there!
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