Air Raid Shelter - A Major UK Town - Nov 2012

UE-OMJ · Nov 21, 2012

4 traffic cones, some red/white ribbon tape, 2 drain lifting keys, some hi-vis jackets and a rainy day... Perfect for getting into an underground air raid shelter :mrgreen:

This wasnt an 'after dark' explore but in broad daylight - well it would have been if it wasnt winter

It's been said before but you can get away with so much in plain sight if you look like you're supposed to be working in the area.

I didnt want to name this location, I know many of you will recognise the place but can you please not put the name on the report. Thanks.

Visited with UrbanX, a very enjoyable evening I must say. Even though there's not much down there to see, except for UrbanX mincing up and down in the dark swinging his torch about :mrgreen:

it was still a great explore with much adrenaline. The entrance/exit made the explore for us. And I learned lots about taking photos in the pitch dark.

Anyway, on with the pics...

Yep, thats the way in! If you look for this place on Google Earth you can just about make out the red arrow on the pavement

Hmm, very dark down here. Glad I bought a few extra torches...

...and some glow sticks

Dunno what that once was, but I think it's broken now...

These were the original extrances but are long since sealed over. Probably part of a main road now...

The most flimsy/decayed wood ever, these chairs cant be moved or they would fall to bits.

Stalagtites...

This looks like a gooey lump on the floor but is actually the start of a stalagmite. I'll have to pop back in a
few hundred years and see how it's doing

I think we're lost... Better start looking for the way out soon...

Ah ha, thats the ladder to the way out...

And it's well rusty...

One more...

I really hope UrbanX has a video or two ready (maybe later?) and his pics as I know they will be much better than mine. Especially the torch swinging ones as I didn’t get any of those

Thanks for UrbanX's company, and thanks for looking

.

UrbanX · Nov 21, 2012

Before I start, can I just ask that if anyone does know where this is: not to publish it below. It’s in such good condition, if it were in the public domain it would deteriorate so quickly.

So, OMJ and I were chatting and both knew of a deep shelter in this city. So naturally decided to pay a visit. We had located it, and there was a manhole cover exactly where it should have been. The problem comes the access…

We hatched a plan that was as brazen as it was audacious. Even on the way there we weren’t sure if we had the balls to do it. But minutes later we arrived, in a white van, in hi vis. We started setting up cones. It was busy, really busy. We were trying not to shoot each other nervous looks. But straight away people were just walking round our little cordon, just listening to their iPods not paying any attention. Our confidence immediately grew, just in time for us to realise we’d just closed off a busy city centre….

For obvious reasons we didn’t have time to set up and take photo’s, but heres a screen grab of the video, which will be out soon.

I’d imagined it to be fairy deep - it’s called a deep shelter. So I was disappointed to climb down 15ft or so onto a solid concrete floor. Aww. Hang on…there’s another ladder down…and another. If you look closely you can see further ladders through the hole.

We descended down the rusty ladder, hearing the street noise disappear, along with the faint orange glow of the street lights, until we hit the stale musty airless vacuum at the bottom. We were about 40m below the surface.

We walked and walked. We took so many right angle turns , I had completely lost my bearings. Corridors just seemed endless and anonymous.

We came to a dead end, which led up top two staircases, both blocked off.

We made our way back through the complex, passing where we’d come in, and heading in the opposite direction. Again we walked, and walked. It went on for what seemed like miles, before we were met with two stair routes up to the surface at 90 degrees apart. Each one had several flights.

Twin Stairscases

At the top was a ladder leading to a manhole. I climbed to the top and could just about get GPS on my phone, so took a pin of where we were for later. I was tempted to give the cover a good shunt, but could hear traffic noise from above so thought better of it.

We carried on walking the legs of tunnels:

UE-OMJ

There wasn’t much by way of artefact, but every now and then you’d find pockets like this:

After we were out I done a route between our access and the other manhole, and the sat nav claimed they were 1.1 miles apart (driving, not as the crow flies) I wish I could have got a ’pin’ at the other end to see how big the whole thing would have been.

After we had all the pics we wanted we headed back towards our access. It was comforting hearing the traffic getting louder, as each lungful of air seemed fresher and fresher. I emerged first as I wanted to film OMJ emerging, and was rumbled straight away. I broke into our cover story of doing a drainage survey, but the neighbour, knew exactly what we were up to. We chatted for 5, and he was overly friendly, confessing he’d always wanted to go down!

Massive thanks to OMJ for the company…and the cones

Proper video to follow, but here's OMJ emerging!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdzDCiNlysI[/ame]