A lot of the time we like to go on about our favourite locations, the ones we've enjoyed the most or had the best experiences of or were most rewarding one way or another. This is especially true during this time of enforced inability to explore we are all experiencing and a lot of reminiscing is going on about the good old days of exploring past.
But now lets take an opportunity to discuss the opposite end of the spectrum for a change. The locations that you tried so hard to get into which turned into massive disappointments. The explores that ended badly in one way or another, the worst things you've found or situations that lead to a terrible experience on an explore be it through unforeseen incidents or other factors - with photographic proof if possible!
The only logical place I can start is Maison Boon in Belgium. It was the end of the long first day of a weeks trip I took over there in 2013 and after checking into our lodgings we realised we had a bit more daylight to play with and headed out to Maison Boon a short drive away from the hotel. At this point, it's important to note, that it was just another derelict Belgian house to me and my friend and neither of us had heard any of the horror stories associated with it. We arrived at the house and this place was about as rural as it could get. I remember the house was on a crossroads with fields on all sides and as we pulled up we immediately noticed a farmer on a tractor in the field opposite the house and he, at the same time, clocked us. I remember I said to my friend that we'd been seen and that perhaps we shouldn't carry on but against my better judgement he turned left and put the car on the road down the side of the house and assured me it'd be fine (famous last words). We got into the house and headed upstairs and after maybe ten minutes we were separated - I was in the bedroom that faced the top of the stairs and my friend was in a room off to the side. I heard, from downstairs, the faintest 'click' sound and stopped what I was doing and the next thing I remember was being confronted by a big burly Belgian farmer wielding a long wooden pole stood in the doorway of the room. He was shouting and swearing and waving the pole around smashing it off stuff in the room and I remember him smashing the bed so hard the pole broke into two pieces. At this point my friend stuck his head around the door and the next bit is a blur but somehow I got around the guy and we walked down the steep stairs and out the house, at this point he had disappeared and I still don't know where he went. As we got out intending to leave we noticed a female figure crouched beside our car and it turned out she was in the middle of cutting the valves off the tyres - my friend chased her off and luckily she only managed to get one completely cut, if she'd got two we would have been absolutely stuffed. At this point my friend actually phoned the Belgian police and whilst we were waiting for them we heard the distinct crack of a shotgun fire over the house.
The police arrived and the two officers kind of played a good cop bad cop thing with us as my friend decided to argue about something with one of them whilst I was sat calmly talking with the other officer. They stayed with us whilst we changed the wheel and I distinctly remember one of them saying to me just before we left 'you were lucky, there are no laws in rural Belgium'. When we got back to the hotel I went online and looked up the house and there was a veritable catalogue of other explorers saying they had encountered severe hostility from the farmer who lives next to the house and warning people off exploring it.
This was the photo I took seconds before things kicked off.
That experience was the single most scared I have ever been for my personal safety. It also majorly put me off exploring remote farmhouses for a good few years after that, it's something I simply couldn't bring myself to do.
Honourable mention in the 'most scared I have ever been' is when I was almost arrested in the USA. We had finished exploring a shitty old factory after a day of abject misery and fails and were making tracks to leave when the local railroad police pulled into the street as we were almost at the car. We left but knew we'd immediately get pulled over and like that we did. The guy was a real jobsworth as apparently we had illegally parked on the railroad property which apparently is something they take too seriously over there, but he did the usual thing of claiming he could smell weed in the car and so escalated it further. I was sat in the front passenger seat with the driver and two others in the car and as he went to run the drivers details I'll never forget my friend in the back seat reaching past me and pulling a huge bag of weed out the glovebox after they had assured the police we didn't have any drugs in the car. He came back and said he couldn't find the drivers details on their database but after a while eventually found it as she had a weird surname. He was still questioning us over the drugs and we were convinced it was going to end badly but he said out of nowhere 'I could get the police down here and search your car and you all but I'll let you off with a warning this time' - we think, because it was almost 6pm, he was right at the end of his shift and he simply didn't want to deal with organising searches for four people and a vehicle and all the paperwork it would involve. Had it been earlier in the day we may not have gotten so lucky - fair to say that was a squeaky bum moment for sure. That experience is the closest I've ever come to being arrested although the experience I had in Derbyshire last year is a close second, the one stroke of luck we had was that we exited the building seconds before the cop turned into the road - had he seen us exit we definitely would have been arrested!
Most disappointing for me would have to be The Springs Hotel, which was a massive let down compared to other old manor houses in the area. It had two or three nice rooms and the rest of it was bog standard boring modernised hotel and I don't understand why it attracted so much interest. That and Minffordd Hospital near Bangor which is probably the single worst hospital I have ever explored, it's somewhere that has no redeeming features at all and should be put out of it's misery.
Accidentally stumbling into a 'trap house' in Wales whilst trying to find a way into an abandoned chapel next door wasn't good either, there was some very fast exiting through the window I'd just climbed through involved in that one. Frustratingly we never got into the chapel either!
I'm sure I've got more, and hopefully there are some good tales of misadventures from other people they can add into this.
But now lets take an opportunity to discuss the opposite end of the spectrum for a change. The locations that you tried so hard to get into which turned into massive disappointments. The explores that ended badly in one way or another, the worst things you've found or situations that lead to a terrible experience on an explore be it through unforeseen incidents or other factors - with photographic proof if possible!
The only logical place I can start is Maison Boon in Belgium. It was the end of the long first day of a weeks trip I took over there in 2013 and after checking into our lodgings we realised we had a bit more daylight to play with and headed out to Maison Boon a short drive away from the hotel. At this point, it's important to note, that it was just another derelict Belgian house to me and my friend and neither of us had heard any of the horror stories associated with it. We arrived at the house and this place was about as rural as it could get. I remember the house was on a crossroads with fields on all sides and as we pulled up we immediately noticed a farmer on a tractor in the field opposite the house and he, at the same time, clocked us. I remember I said to my friend that we'd been seen and that perhaps we shouldn't carry on but against my better judgement he turned left and put the car on the road down the side of the house and assured me it'd be fine (famous last words). We got into the house and headed upstairs and after maybe ten minutes we were separated - I was in the bedroom that faced the top of the stairs and my friend was in a room off to the side. I heard, from downstairs, the faintest 'click' sound and stopped what I was doing and the next thing I remember was being confronted by a big burly Belgian farmer wielding a long wooden pole stood in the doorway of the room. He was shouting and swearing and waving the pole around smashing it off stuff in the room and I remember him smashing the bed so hard the pole broke into two pieces. At this point my friend stuck his head around the door and the next bit is a blur but somehow I got around the guy and we walked down the steep stairs and out the house, at this point he had disappeared and I still don't know where he went. As we got out intending to leave we noticed a female figure crouched beside our car and it turned out she was in the middle of cutting the valves off the tyres - my friend chased her off and luckily she only managed to get one completely cut, if she'd got two we would have been absolutely stuffed. At this point my friend actually phoned the Belgian police and whilst we were waiting for them we heard the distinct crack of a shotgun fire over the house.
The police arrived and the two officers kind of played a good cop bad cop thing with us as my friend decided to argue about something with one of them whilst I was sat calmly talking with the other officer. They stayed with us whilst we changed the wheel and I distinctly remember one of them saying to me just before we left 'you were lucky, there are no laws in rural Belgium'. When we got back to the hotel I went online and looked up the house and there was a veritable catalogue of other explorers saying they had encountered severe hostility from the farmer who lives next to the house and warning people off exploring it.
This was the photo I took seconds before things kicked off.
That experience was the single most scared I have ever been for my personal safety. It also majorly put me off exploring remote farmhouses for a good few years after that, it's something I simply couldn't bring myself to do.
Honourable mention in the 'most scared I have ever been' is when I was almost arrested in the USA. We had finished exploring a shitty old factory after a day of abject misery and fails and were making tracks to leave when the local railroad police pulled into the street as we were almost at the car. We left but knew we'd immediately get pulled over and like that we did. The guy was a real jobsworth as apparently we had illegally parked on the railroad property which apparently is something they take too seriously over there, but he did the usual thing of claiming he could smell weed in the car and so escalated it further. I was sat in the front passenger seat with the driver and two others in the car and as he went to run the drivers details I'll never forget my friend in the back seat reaching past me and pulling a huge bag of weed out the glovebox after they had assured the police we didn't have any drugs in the car. He came back and said he couldn't find the drivers details on their database but after a while eventually found it as she had a weird surname. He was still questioning us over the drugs and we were convinced it was going to end badly but he said out of nowhere 'I could get the police down here and search your car and you all but I'll let you off with a warning this time' - we think, because it was almost 6pm, he was right at the end of his shift and he simply didn't want to deal with organising searches for four people and a vehicle and all the paperwork it would involve. Had it been earlier in the day we may not have gotten so lucky - fair to say that was a squeaky bum moment for sure. That experience is the closest I've ever come to being arrested although the experience I had in Derbyshire last year is a close second, the one stroke of luck we had was that we exited the building seconds before the cop turned into the road - had he seen us exit we definitely would have been arrested!
Most disappointing for me would have to be The Springs Hotel, which was a massive let down compared to other old manor houses in the area. It had two or three nice rooms and the rest of it was bog standard boring modernised hotel and I don't understand why it attracted so much interest. That and Minffordd Hospital near Bangor which is probably the single worst hospital I have ever explored, it's somewhere that has no redeeming features at all and should be put out of it's misery.
Accidentally stumbling into a 'trap house' in Wales whilst trying to find a way into an abandoned chapel next door wasn't good either, there was some very fast exiting through the window I'd just climbed through involved in that one. Frustratingly we never got into the chapel either!
I'm sure I've got more, and hopefully there are some good tales of misadventures from other people they can add into this.
