Hi All,
This is a couple of months old - not been very active since this trip finished and uni started again - but just to not be a lurker...
I had seen photos of this epic place. It is often confused with ECVB which is a general name for the electricity company as well as the name of a site that we did on a previous trip to Belgium. We started in the started in the single cooling tower that is divided from the main site by a canal. It was a cold day and the wind cut through any number of layers to leave us shivering in moments after leaving the warm car. We walked down a covered walkway, the first fallen leaves blown around our feet, lifted and as quickly dropped on the soft earth that shifted slightly under foot. I had been under cooling towers before at Thorpe Marsh but all but one of these had been stripped and even the one that was complete showed no easy way to access the upper level. This was a different game. Wooden slats lay between concrete posts and a section had been cleared. We climbed upwards and appeared into the bright floor above. Small shells filled troughs that would have carried the water this last leg of its journey through the power station, but we were a long way from the sea. In the middle was a great plug-hole, green from dampness, gaping and quickly black. As I approached it, as with the edge of anything, my stomach would twist into knots and you get that vertigo urge to fling yourself into the space, believing that the space itself will cushion and support you. Not being able to see the bottom only enhanced this feeling.
We climbed down and walked back across the canal. As we crossed the water, the man in his little booth on the lock withdrew the bridge after us. Had he seen us climb in and out? Probably? He probably also had a good idea of where we might be going.
Accessing the main building of IM was like walking through a dream. Upwards and downwards through dark corridors illuminated with dirty green light. As if the walls has spouted a glowing plant life. These long caves were transitional and marked is a much longer way than usual the movement from a world with an established, obeyed, order to one of anarchy, where fences were objects of a challenge within a game and where there were no exclusion zones.
IM is odd because it feels like that everyone simply downed tools and left. So much is there untouched that you half expect someone to walk in, pull of plastic covers and watch the building spring back to life. The lights are already on and the stillness in the building is one that waits for something to return. The very bricks longed for the noise that had filled the halls. We worked our way through a maze of stairs and then back tracked and exited back through the caves, the shadows playing tricks with the eyes, or was there something shifting in the dark?
This is a couple of months old - not been very active since this trip finished and uni started again - but just to not be a lurker...
I had seen photos of this epic place. It is often confused with ECVB which is a general name for the electricity company as well as the name of a site that we did on a previous trip to Belgium. We started in the started in the single cooling tower that is divided from the main site by a canal. It was a cold day and the wind cut through any number of layers to leave us shivering in moments after leaving the warm car. We walked down a covered walkway, the first fallen leaves blown around our feet, lifted and as quickly dropped on the soft earth that shifted slightly under foot. I had been under cooling towers before at Thorpe Marsh but all but one of these had been stripped and even the one that was complete showed no easy way to access the upper level. This was a different game. Wooden slats lay between concrete posts and a section had been cleared. We climbed upwards and appeared into the bright floor above. Small shells filled troughs that would have carried the water this last leg of its journey through the power station, but we were a long way from the sea. In the middle was a great plug-hole, green from dampness, gaping and quickly black. As I approached it, as with the edge of anything, my stomach would twist into knots and you get that vertigo urge to fling yourself into the space, believing that the space itself will cushion and support you. Not being able to see the bottom only enhanced this feeling.
We climbed down and walked back across the canal. As we crossed the water, the man in his little booth on the lock withdrew the bridge after us. Had he seen us climb in and out? Probably? He probably also had a good idea of where we might be going.
Accessing the main building of IM was like walking through a dream. Upwards and downwards through dark corridors illuminated with dirty green light. As if the walls has spouted a glowing plant life. These long caves were transitional and marked is a much longer way than usual the movement from a world with an established, obeyed, order to one of anarchy, where fences were objects of a challenge within a game and where there were no exclusion zones.
IM is odd because it feels like that everyone simply downed tools and left. So much is there untouched that you half expect someone to walk in, pull of plastic covers and watch the building spring back to life. The lights are already on and the stillness in the building is one that waits for something to return. The very bricks longed for the noise that had filled the halls. We worked our way through a maze of stairs and then back tracked and exited back through the caves, the shadows playing tricks with the eyes, or was there something shifting in the dark?
looks sick! 
