Sick Britain

It’s been a while since I managed to find time for exploring with a combination of weather, birthdays, grubby British weather and so on but this weekend I managed to get across to West Park (report due soon) and I managed to have a little poke around in the woods near RAF Finmere.

When I arrived in the area there seemed to be some activity on the airfield so I had to give that a miss but so I headed down to the woods, parking next to (but not in front of!) a gate by a public footpath. The woods seem to be used heavily for paintballing and there’s plastic tape up all over the place, I managed to tread carefully and avoid being shot but on a couple of occasions I did end up within a hundred yards of a group of paintballers but I don’t think anyone spotted me.

The majority of the structures remaining seem to be odd roofless bunker/trench type arrangements, I saw at least 7 or 8 of them dotted throughout the woods (bearing in mind I was avoiding the ‘live fire’ of the paintballers), I’m not sure what their original use would have been…

I didn’t have much time on my hands so I was probably only wandering around for an hour or so, I’d love to come back with someone who knows the area a bit better – if anyone’s interested please give me a shout.

The Royal Observer Corps were in existence from 1925 to 1995 and their first significant operation was to act as aircraft spotters in WW2 where their task was to radio in any sightings of enemy aircraft or flying bombs. After the war ended they were briefly stood down after being in continuous operation from September 1939 to May 1945 then as the peace transitioned into the Cold War their role changed. The new role was to report nuclear explosions and monitor the nuclear fallout, to do this the crew of three would have to be prepared to spend up to 21 days underground in a 16ft x 7ft x 7ft bunker, between 1958 and 1968 over 1,500 of these bunkers were built across the country.

ROC Remembered is a site built by the grandson of a former ROC member in memory of his grandmother, it lists the state of ROC posts around the country and includes photos and coordinates of many…

http://www.rocremembered.com/

Following on from my other urbex videos, I’ve compiled a final video that completes the exploration of Nocton RAF Hospital. This third video runs through a large swathe of the main building with a few excursions, it was easily the creepiest part of the whole day and a large part of why I got the hell out of there!

If you’d like to learn a little more about the place, please check out the first Nocton video or you can get some great background info from RAF-Lincolnshire.info.

Music used in video…

http://ccmixter.org/files/milabrya/19323
http://ccmixter.org/files/morgantj/19473

Following on from my first urbex video, I’ve compiled another video that continues the exploration of Nocton RAF Hospital. The second video picks up where the first left off and contains video footage and photographs of a large part of the facility’s exterior and a few shots from inside buildings, leading right up to the point where I enter the main building…

If you want a little history you can check out the first Nocton video or you can get some great background info from RAF-Lincolnshire.info.

Music used in video…

http://ccmixter.org/files/GrangeGorman/12222
http://ccmixter.org/files/Loveshadow/12996

Whilst exploring the abandoned RAF hospital at Nocton I lodged my camera-phone behind the strap of my camera bag to make an impromptu body-cam and have edited the footage together with my photos from the day to make the video below. This video represents roughly the first third of the explore (it’s a big site) and around half of all the photos I took, the music used in the clip was taken from CCMixter.org, links to the tracks are below the video. Before watching the video it’s worth perhaps having a little history on the place, I’ve taken my info from RAF-Lincolnshire.info and Wikipedia, you can read more there if you wish.

The site contains an historic listed building, a stately home originally constructed in 1834 and rebuilt in 1841 by the first Earl of Ripon. The hall was first used as an convalescent home for American officers in 1917 during the Great War and was turned into a full-scale hospital by the RAF in 1940 but was has been intermittently used by the US Army from World War 2 right up to the first Gulf War in 1991/92. At it’s height of readiness during the Gulf War the site employed roughly 1,300 medical staff and had 740 beds even though it only ended up treating 35 casualties, following this period the hospital was handed back to the RAF and was finally abandoned to the elements in September 1995.

On a personal note, I find it sad that the property (especially the hall) has been left to fall into such a derelict state, it has been the victim of several arson attacks and an extensive amount of vandalism but the place still has a lot of character with an air of eeriness about it, mainly due to its size and advanced state of dereliction.

Music used in video…

http://ccmixter.org/files/everyeye/3206
http://ccmixter.org/files/Neurowaxx/19080
http://ccmixter.org/files/LiquidEyes/11536