Sick Britain

After a failed explore elsewhere I decided to find an alternative to avoid a wash-out, I was carrying my Dell Mini 9 & 3G data stick so I did a little research on the web and came up with Pavenham ROC. I chose an ROC post because they don’t generally require much preparation and as long as you’ve found a recent report of one being accessible you’re likely to have no trouble getting in. I chose Pavenham as the location looked remote enough that the ‘chav factor’ wouldn’t come into play and previous reports and photos made it look like an easy approach.

On arrival at Pavenham I struggled to find the site, part because I didn’t have the exact coordinates and part because there was a road closed in the area which caused a long diversion. I cracked open the Dell Mini again and managed to find a grid reference (thanks due to ROC Remembered) and my satnav took me right to the place.

Previous reports made it look as though the post was right in the middle of a patch of brambles so I opted for an approach from the hedge side as it offered more cover from view of few houses and a public footpath. As I proceeded to drag myself through the hedge backwards I noticed a couple of topside features (air ventilator and probe cover) hidden amongst the brambles so I knew I was in the right place but I only found the hatch as I emerged from inside the hedge back into the field so there really is no point in approaching from that side!

The hatch opened easily and I immediately noticed a difference between this post and the previous two I had visited:

The key difference is that the one at Pavenham has the hatch counterweight on the right-hand side whereas those in Alderbury and Burgh-on-Bain are to your back which I found out much to my peril when I got a nasty bump on the head climbing up! The Pavenham solution seems much better and I’m not sure why they’re not all like that, perhaps they realised part way through the nationwide construction programme that they’d end up with injured officers up and down the country!

The inside of the bunker was pretty clean although much more sparse than the previous two ROC posts I have visited, I was very impressed to see many individual artefacts still present including an intact mirror. The other items present included a Glitto canister, a tin of Luxol enamel paint, a Tankard Bitter ashtray, the Eltex chemical toilet and various pieces of paper in good readable condition. The most notable item missing was the bunk bed, this leaves quite a large space free at the back of the room but that at least gave me a better perspective and I got to see the room from a different angle than those normally available to me.

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I originally made an ill-fated trip down here in May 2008 and managed to get one useful shot off before my camera (a Canon 400D) started throwing up the chilling ‘ERR99′ – the error it shows when it knows somethings is wrong but doesn’t know what. Thankfully that turned out just to be the Tamron 17-50mm I had (since replaced by the Sigma) but it did mean my original attempt at Nocton was an epic fail. I don’t really pass through this area very often so it was a while before I could make my repeat visit but in March I managed to swing by with an hour or two to spare and it was well worth it. There are two possible explores at Nocton, one is Nocton Hall (pictured right) and the other is the enormous former 740-bed RAF Hospital, I went for the latter and passed by the hall as I had limited time and the lure of an abandoned RAF hospital was just too much!

Entrance to the site was simple, I parked up right next to the giant metal gates which were already completely busted up. I got my tools out (Canon 400D, Sigma 18-50mm, Speedlite 580 EXII, Maglite), gloves on (left hand full DeWalt, right hand fingerless), mounted my head-torch and headed on into the site. At first I had a poke around some of the nearby buildings and a few Anderson shelters before heading towards the nearer edge of the site, at this point I pulled back because that area is easily visible from the houses and flats in the distance and I didn’t want to blow my cover this early! After looking around a few of the other buildings in near the gate I headed rightwards.

It’s easy to underestimate this place at first but Nocton is truly massive – space isn’t really a problem in Lincolnshire so almost all of the buildings are single storey and if you imagine a combined RAF base and 740-bed hospital it ends up being an extremely large site. Inside the main body of the facility there are a series of long corridors, in what appears to be the main building there’s a large corridor running down from front to back (i.e. from the gate end straight forward) which is then crossed by long corridors running to the left and right at several intersections down the main corridor.

The walls contain directions around the site in the form of coloured stripes and every now and again you see a red bar hanging from the ceiling showing which department you’re at, in my time there the only labelled bits I made it to were the pharmacy, path lab, surgical ward and gynaecology department. Pretty much all of the rooms across the site are large and empty, it’s reasonably clear to see where an area would have been full of beds (i.e. a standard ward) and where there would’ve been a series of private rooms with beds but some of the areas are a bit ‘different’ and have some interesting little quirks. One of the more interesting buildings I found must have been some kind of administrative block and housed a giant safe, seemingly impossible to get into now but the door is still there and the whole unit is at least the size of a normal door. The place must have housed sensitive documents and military secrets, I’m not sure exactly when Nocton closed down but it’s intriguing to think about whether there’s still some classified material stashed away in there!

Across the whole of the base there are in excess of 50 buildings (see Google Maps) so there’s quite a lot of work to be done if you want to cover the whole place. I only skimmed the surface really but I think I managed to rush my way in and out of most of the major areas (but certainly not every building in each area). In terms of safety I saw a couple of signs and even some graffiti pointing out that there is asbestos present on the site so make sure you go in there wearing a P3 dust mask.

I picked mine up at Screwfix for about £5, there are cheaper P3 masks but don’t compromise your safety by using a lower rated (or unrated) mask or by using some other fabric to cover your mouth – if it doesn’t work out you could end up with serious illness down the line. Otherwise I thought that most of the surroundings, floors, ceilings and the occasional staircase all seemed relatively intact – it doesn’t mean they all are though so keep your wits sharp and don’t forget to read the Urbex Safety post.

After exploring for nearly a couple of hours I began to get one of those ‘sixth sense’ feelings that I’d overstayed my welcome and decided to leave, I took my time traversing the site and popped into a few areas on the way but I was fully intending to head off the site. I’d gotten this strange vibe that maybe I wasn’t alone on the site, it’s hard to explain why as I hadn’t heard any voices and sites like this always have strange noises (doors creaking/banging, pipes rattling, etc.). I wouldn’t say that I was worried as it was a windy day which will increase that sort of ‘natural’ activity and besides the only people likely to be on the site would be other people exploring and I’ve always found other explorers to be polite and courteous (if not slightly suspicious!) but something deep inside me told me that I really ought to leave and it’s always worth listening to your instinct.

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Whenever I’m on a long drive across the country I tend to slot in little quick urbex stops along the route to break up the journey (hell, it’s better than many motorway services). Recently I stopped off just outside a little village in Lincolnshire known as Burgh-on-Bain to take a quick look at the ROC post there. It’s extremely easy to find and right on a crossroads, the road’s not too busy either so parking isn’t a problem (you’re almost literally in the middle of nowhere).

The location is pretty but the inside is quite trashed, nowhere near as good a condition as Alderbury ROC I visited not long ago. Despite that, this post still has a piece of switchgear intact which was quite interesting and a strange board with pictures of spanners on it (presumably where they used to hang).

This time I didn’t encounter any fellow explorers so I just had a look around the underground portion as well as a little look at the overground shed/building – I’m not sure what this would have been used for though. I didn’t have much time so I just headed back to the car, there’s never a great deal of exploring to be done at ROC posts anyway.

One bit of advice I have for you when exploring ROC posts is to watch the metal counterweight on the way back up! I managed to bump my head on it quite heavily and I could still feel the pain a day later, if you did this too severely you could even slip off the ladder which could be quite dangerous so take care.

Here’s a few more photos…

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This was a classic Sunday afternoon “what shall I do?” moment, quite why I ended up deciding to do three and a half hour’s driving to explore a tiny Cold War Nuclear Bunker in Wiltshire I don’t know but that’s the thing about Urban Exploration – it piques your interest just enough to make you do crazy things. Before visiting the Alderbury ROC I knew very little of it’s history, I’ve since done some research (mainly on Wikipedia) and it’s quite an interesting piece of history I’d never heard.

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.

On arrival at the site I had to straddle a barbed-wire fence and then found the hatch easily, it was weighted down by a large flint boulder and the hatch opened easily once it was removed. Having never been to an ROC post before I felt a little apprehensive as I looked down the pitch black hatch, 20ft above a dark and slightly watery looking floor – anything could’ve been down there. I strapped on my head torch and proceeded downwards and I was surprised to see how small these bunkers were. Having been down there for just a few minutes I heard voices approaching, I stayed quiet for a brief time to gauge who the people were and what they might be doing. I was somewhat paranoid of being locked down there by the landowner or some random miscreants so before they reached the hatch I yelled out “HELLO?”, this startled the new visitors briefly and then they hung their heads over to see what was going on. It turned out that they were fellow explorers like me and they seemed like a nice friendly pair and it was nice to meet them both.

The bunker itself was surprisingly small and contained a pair of bunk-beds, a couple of cupboards, a crate and quite a few pieces of paperwork and documentation including fallout charts, instructions, aircraft identification diagrams and so on. This particular bunker was in pretty good condition, I gather from Googling around that many are not quite this neat and tidy, this one was apparently used by the BBC at some point in the recent past.

Having been down there for probably 10 minutes or so I decided to pop back up (as did my fellow explorers) and call it a day. It took us a few minutes to figure out how to shut the hatch (don’t force it, there’s a bar you need to shift and then it works) and then I replaced the boulder and headed back to the car.

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