® Andy’s blog of blogs

When I’m out exploring there are the sorts of hazards you might expect. Rotten floors … you learn to check things out first and walk on the joists where you can. Heights … just be sensible and anything serious should use some sort of fall arrester. Glass and other sharp nasties … good shoes and a pair of leather palmed kevlar work gloves. Absestos … a P3-rated half mask. Security guards with dogs with sharp pointy teeth … stealth, cunning, and a fast pair of legs. All things I’m prepared for and carry gear to handle in my exploring pack, along with first aid kit, multi-tool, and a multitude of torches.

However, there is one hazard you can’t really prepare for … other people! Using the current UK vernacular, the groups of feral “chav” kids, and the gangs of “pikeys” stealing all the metal work they can rip out of a building with their stilsons, crowbars and gas cutting gear. A lone explorer with an expensive camera is an easy target for anybody given to aggression and theft, hence why they are the hazard I fear most and the one that I’m very careful to avoid at all cost!

Not that I’m in anyway advocating a more armed response but the following torches unsurprisingly caught my eye …

• The Porcupine
• FMG-9 concept flashlight

Here it is … a snip at 159 bucks!

#1 - stick it in your gob.

#2 - use it for looking down the FSM tube on ROC posts when out exploring.

#3 - #101 - far to rude or disgusting to mention ;-).

The other evening I caught the last 10 minutes of Tommy showing late night on TV. I’ve seen it various times when I was younger, but not since I’ve been quite so “attuned” to my environment courtesy of my exploring. Hence, the thing I immediately noticed was that Tommy’s holiday camp was at one of the Portsdown forts, and a quick Google turned up this interesting site. As it turns out the vast majority of the film was shot around Pompey!

So interesting fact #1 - I was right, and it was Fort Purbrook.

Interesting fact #2 - at the end of the film there is a short bit of footage of a pier really on fire. I’d assumed it was some stock footage of perhaps one of the Brighton piers. However it was in fact South Parade Pier in Southsea! It turns out the the pier that we’ve regularly walked down is very different now to how it used to be courtesy of a couple of fires around the era of Tommy. The first destroyed the theatre, and the second was actually the result of an accident whilst filming Tommy which did for the rest of the pier. So the footage is real, and the pier now is a much less grand version rebuilt after the Tommy accident.

And interesting fact #3 - the end of the film with lots of large silver balls was filmed at the (infamous) Pounds Scrapyard. Ironically I was talking about Pounds just last night. Over the years the amount of cool things you could see at Pounds as you head across the M275 into Pompey have reduced, but it’s still an interesting target for exploration. However, the owners have a reputation for not “welcoming” visitors, though activity on the site has now greatly reduced ahead of (very lucrative) redevelopment.

Anyhow, time for me to get a copy of Tommy, and watch it with renewed interest!

With some of the more popular destinations for Urban Explorers, you’ll often find that a particular location has been photographed by many different people from many different angles. Microsoft’s Live Labs are working on a bit of technology that takes a large collection of photos of a place and, by analyzing them for similarities, is able to map them to a reconstructed 3D space.

There’s a cool demo here, though it does require you install a new plug-in for your browser to view it.

Err … it’s the cumofsomeyoungsalmon.

Tall building to climb, but climbing ropes still makes you feel funny inside like it did at school, or perhaps you’re just a weak bastard like me!?

Here’s a solution … though not a particularly practical one.

Perhaps you visited a huge industrial site and got covered in dust and grime, or maybe the flying rats got the better of you and you stink! What do you do? Well you could get out your trusty baby wipes (which typically get dried out by the heat of my engine where they live in my exploring bag in my boot) and maybe some anti-bac handwash. Or howsabout you have a quick shower?

I first visited Jacksons Farm back in April. It’s somewhere I’ve driven past regularly for many years, and I’d been watching it slowly fall to pieces before ultimately being abandoned. On my last visit the large farm house, that I’ve always admired, was well boarded. However, as I knew would probably happen in the end, somebody has now pulled the boards off and started ripping the place to pieces in search of copper and the like. Reckon it didn’t take them long to discover that actually there wasn’t much of value.

So up at 5:15AM, a brisk walk a mile down the road and a small battle with some brambles, and I was able to spend an hour mooching. I’d been hoping that the farm house would still have evidence of its previous occupants, but actually it was totally stripped of everything apart from the curtains and some carpets. Hence after all the waiting, ultimately it was a rather soulless shit tip! Light was pretty crap too at that time of day, but at least I can consider it now completely “done”!

All the pictures from both visits are here.