I have been interested in Urbex for a while now, I think I discovered it by a fellow student at uni and then started looking into it myself. Some of you may know the word Urbex, but for those who don't it means Urban Exploration. And this is where you go to abandoned buildings, they could be anything from bomb shelters from the war or factories closed a month ago.
Urbex has seemed to have boomed throughout 2012, it is quite a well known thing to do now. The people who go to these places aren't going because they want to trash the place, they go because they appreciate the architecture and how interesting it is to look around an abandoned, half falling down building.
Although sometimes, you do have to climb a fence, or break a door to get into a building. Like what I had to do...
After deciding to go to this abandoned mental hospital, I went there with a model (pictures to come soon), we found the place and trudged through the mud and brambles to get nearer to it. We came out of a heavy forested area to come face to face with a 6ft metal fence. But just behind the fence we could see an amazing Gothic style building and it made me really exited to finally be there.
Here is an awkward side view of the main house.
After deciding to follow the fence along a bit to see if there was any other way to get past it, we came across this tower.
This definitely looks like something out of a horror movie, I couldn't believe it.
We then decided the only way the get there would be to somehow climb this fence, with sharp metal spikes at the top...
The model tried first and made it look so easy, her friend then managed to next although she was a bit slower. I passed the bags and my camera bag over the top of the fence and tried myself.
My trainers were slipping on the fence so I had to swap shoes with one of the girls, I made my way up one side slowly and stood on the top of the fence and turned to face the other side. Where we had decided to climb was next to a lamp-post so we would have something to hold onto when up on the top of fence, good thinking right?
Well, on my way down one of my feet slipped and I slid my hands down the metal slats of the fence only to slice through them! I also tried to let my weight off my hands whilst falling down by leaning onto the lamp-post, but this just left me with a graze on my arm an now a huge blue and black bruise. But hey ho, we were in!
I was holding tissue to my heavily bleeding hand and we found a way into one of the buildings.
I really enjoyed creeping around the buildings whilst the model was getting changed, going by myself made it feel extra scary and intense. I was a little afraid of what I might find around the corner!
So on the way out I had to face the fence again, but luckily I managed to not cut myself again. I used my sleeves to hold onto the fence with as my hands were so sore, although I did made a hole in a sleeve.
But even after all that, I was buzzing. It was a great feeling of achievement to say I had managed to get into this place and get some great photos.
I can't wait to go somewhere new next time, the experience hasn't put me off at all.
I will do my next post about the photos I took with the model I went with, including some latex!
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