October 19th, 2014 - Morning Chateau Hogemeyer. Time for another urbex trip! But this time, we stayed in our old, dear Belgium! ;) Of to Chateau Hogemeyer! After less than an one hour drive, we arrived in the street of the chateu. We had to drive by a few times to see for a spot to park the car because there waren't any parking spots and we didn't want to park too nearby to avoid beeing seen by anyone. But we didn't get to walk too far back... ;) Back at the chateau, we immediately see the gate with the no trespassing text on it, but hey, we're urbexers, and we ignore such texts, right? ;) Passing the gate to enter, wasn't hard at all, there's plenty of space to enter so that was a piece of cake., and entering the chateau itself was as easy as wel. Inside, we were stunned by the amount of decay. Broken windows, some pieces of floor that weren't there anymore, collapsed ceilings, ... We had to be really careful in here. We managed to take some shots of the hallway, the stairs, the ornaments above the doors in the hallway and ofcourse, the chapel. I also found myself some pretty windows and a beautiful couch, so I was happy! ;) Back outside, we looked around at the property, shooting the camper and the cars and trucks out there before we went into one of the barns. Inside the barn, we found a wooden carriage we just had to photograph. We took a look into the garage, took some pictures of the cars and the equipment inside and went back to the front of the chateau for some last exterior shots. When we were photogrzaphing in front of the building, a guy with a camera passed the gate and asked us if we were the owners, because he was interested in the building. He was the only living soul we bumped into out there... ;) After a brief conversation, we took of. Time for our second location! ;) Check the Chateau Hogemeyer gallery HERE. October 19th - During the day Salve Mater After visiting Chateau Hogemeyer, we drove to Salve Mater. We all know some of the buildings are already renovated, but at the time, there still were some abandoned buildings left too. Getting there wasn't hard at all, there were signs everywhere! ;) Getting in wasn't hard either. The buildings are surrounded by a (public?) park and you can walk straight in it. This was probably the easiest urbex location to find ever, so it was a very good one to start of an urbex career. I don't know if there's anything left by now (after all, our visit was months ago and when I'm typing this, it's june 2015 already) but if there is, you better hurry up! ;) We ignored the already renovated buildings, obviousely, and we didn't bump into the photographer living in one of the abandoned buildings, so I guess we were lucky that day... ;) We started our walk in the park, watching the buildings, untill some guy walked up to us and told us there was a way to enter one of the buildings. He was going in himself, so we went along and followed him. Inside, we immediately spotted some other urbexers, so we weren't the only ones... ;) At first, there was't much to see. actually. Just a bunch of empty rooms (or, if we were lucky, a room with one bed in it... ;) ), a bunch of hallways and doors (some of the doors were pretty though) and once and a while, an abandoned chair in the hallway, but the further we went, the better it got! We managed to shoot the freaky shower with the rubber boots, the bleeding bathtub and the grafitti man, amongst other things, and I was very pleased with that. Unfortunately, when we wanted to enter the church, a girl, living in the pastors house, walked across us, asking what we were doing and telling us we weren't allowed to go inside the buildings. Luckily she didn't catched us entering or leaving one of the buildings! ;) Well, I guess our luck was gone by then! ;) When the girl walked away, we took a fast "through the window" picture of the table inside the morgue, and after that, we also took of. Check the Salve Mater gallery HERE. Untill my next footprints! ;) XOXO Nathalie
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October 4th, 2104 - Morning. Departure to France and Prison H15. Well, it's actually june now, when I'm writing down all of this, so I have to do some deep digging into my pour and miserable memory (I really can't remember anything these days! ;)) to be able to write everything down! ;) Let's hope I'm not forgetting something! ;) When my boyfriend and me woke up that morning in october, we both were so enthousiast! We were heading of to France to go see Prison H15! Yay! This was going to be my very first real urbex experiece, can you imagine?! I've been visiting urbex locations before, but this was the first time I was actually photographing a location myself, so it was a big deal to me! ;) So, after a 2 hours drive, we arrived at the scene. We drove around the complex, to see where to put the car, found the perfect spot to park and after a short walk along the guards houses, we found ourself standing in front of the wall of the first building. We've found the woman's wing! Well done! ;) Getting inside the first building, wasn't hard at all, I'm not gonna share the ins and outs here, obviousely, but let me tell you that one walk around the prisonwalls was enough to show us all we needed to know! ;) So, that was it, we managed to get inside and it was time to get busy! ;) We started off at the roof of a security room to get some exterior shots of the buildings. My "wire fence" picture (left) was also taken up there. After taking the obligate "outside" shots, it was time to take our business inside, so after we went down from the roof, we left the security room, walked through an open gate (how convienent! ;) ) and set foot on the actual prison floor! The first rooms we spotted, were some empty working rooms and then we found ourselfes in the main prison block. Let's go see what a prison cel really looks like! ;) Well, what can I say... It's small and uncomfortable! ;) We did all the floors and took pictures everywhere but let's face it, those prisoncels all look the same... ;) After a while, we've seen everything (yes, the chapel too) and we went back outside to look for an entrance into building two, the men's block. We did hear a lot of noises while we were still in the first building, but didn't spend too much attention on it. I guess we better did after all... But more on that in a second! ;) Outside, we peeped through the peephole in the main entrance (and spotted the gypsy camp. We haven't seen them anywhere else in or around the buildings), took some pictures from the gates, the buildings, the guarding towers and the sporting facilities outside the men's block before we went into the second building. So, as I mentioned before, we've heard a lot of noises while photographing in building #1. You probably guessed it already: the whole building was filled with airsofters. Quite scary actually. I never seen, nor have I done airsofting, so I really didn't knew anything about it. Little did I know they were dressed like soldiers and actually really shooting people, in real life! Well, with airsoft bullets ofcourse, not real ones, but hey, they both hurt! ;) My boyfriend got hit while entering the second building. We walked up some stairs and were standing in front of a half open door when an airsoft bullet hit him on his hand. We didn't know how to get downstairs any faster! I think we were almost flying back then! ;) Lol! One of those men came outside and told us they were airsofting, we better dind't enter the building as long they were in there, but we entered through another entrance and took our pictures as fast as we could, with our ears wide open for any airsoft sounds... ;) Besides the airsofters, we did bump into lots of other urbexers, from all over Europe! ;) After a few hours, we've seen it all and called it a day. Off to the next location! ;) Check the Prison H15 Gallery HERE. October 4th, 2014 - During the day Usine Standart S.A. Cant say much about this one actually. We took some pictures of the abandoned industrial things and equipments left in there... It was fun, but I'm not really interested in industrial places... We did bump into some French teenagers, probably wanted to chill in there. Let's hope they didn't trash the place! ;) Check the Usine Standart S.A. gallery HERE. October 4th, 2014 - Afternoon Les Moulins de Paris Another location I really can't tell much about, actually. When we arrived, some girls were shooting a photoshoot in there, they must have seen something special here, but I couldn't see it. The location was decayed that much I had trouble making some pictures, can you imagine? I managed to take a grafitti picture and some location pictures, but I sure ain't doing a revisit here! ;) When we were taking our pictures, it started to rain really bad and we didn't wanna ruin our camera's, obviousely, so we left, got to our car and went back home. Check the Moulin de Paris gallery HERE. Untill my next footprints! ;) XOXO - Nathalie |
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