Hill of Crosses, Lithuania - October 2015

I'm not sure where I first read about the Hill of Crosses, but I suspect it was some click bait or article on the world's scariest places, my young daughter even told me it was number 7 in the world top ten of spookiest places.

Tucked away in the Lithuanian countryside is a growing collection of crosses, crucifixes, carvings, rosaries and effigies. Current estimates put the number of crosses at in excess of 140,000 and the number of crosses grows day by day.

It is believed the first crosses appeared after the 1831 uprising against the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union authorities bulldozed the site at least 3 times between 1944 and 1990.

We visited late evening as the sun fell and again early morning the following day.

We, being Tbolt, Tin Dog, Darmon Richter and myself, sadly didn't find it spooky at all despite what you may read elsewhere.



























So to recap boys and girls, not spooky, not scary, not even urbex, just bloody good and a very peaceful place to visit.

A rare 10/10 from me - file under Excellent.

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Skrunda 1, Latvia - October 2015

If you drive down the country P116 road in Latvia you come to a bus stop next to a concrete side road into the trees.

Tin Dog, Tbolt, Darmon Ritcher and myself pulled up in the car only to be greeted by a number of the locals.

One of the locals, a Bill Clinton like chap, stepped forward to our car and began to question us in Latvian. "English" I piped up and a comical exercise in why perhaps it is a good idea to own a phrase book occurred. I decided to act dumb and made bird like wing movements with my hands "we bird watchers", a long pause and then Bill Clinton's  reply was something like "no birds, abandoned military base". We thought he was kind of beckoning us in to take a look - so far so good, we drove on down the concrete road.

We parked up a little hesitant, Skrunda had a checkered history of access with stories of guard dogs and heavy security only short of, to quote "sharks and laser beams". Skrunda had then become a free for all for the locals but then had recently been sold - access today would seem to be wide open, as we had been advised.



This Russian secret military base was finally abandoned in 1998 and is rather reminiscent of Pripyat without the Ferris wheel and radioactivity.





Onto a roof for a view of the area



It was about this time we spotted a security van driving through the site, thankfully it finally left but we upped our game, given that we had simply walked in through an open gate we hadn't expected a security van. Had Bill Clinton and his band of locals set us up for a big fall?

















Target 1, the shooting range - no pun intended.







Then it went a little bit shit, Darmon spotted two chaps in high viz, we scoped our car and parked slap bang next to it was a police van !!! Time to move sharpish - these chaps are mostly armed and like a good large bribe - we didn't know if we should be in this place or not and stupidly we didn't know our legal rights - not that this means a great deal when you may be face to face with a couple of bent coppers with guns.....

Into the cover of trees and into the shadow of buildings we nervously made a rather rapid move towards the far end of the site taking shelter one of the buildings.

Darmon instructed us all to swap the memory cards in our cameras for fresh blank ones, shortly after we took the shots from target 2.







Time to move bloody sharpish, we could see the coppers moving from building to building, we moved to the far end of the site, in a rather feverish few minutes - being stalked by armed police was not part of the holiday pitch to Tbolt and Tin Dog. Mrs Tbolt and Mrs Tin Dog would never forgive me if this all went tits up.



 



Shelter taken, the decision was taken to exit and we fled over the border to Lithuania.






A rare 10/10 - a return visit required as so much more to see.

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Doll Garden of Sabile, Latvia - October 2015

This one is not urbex, just file under weird shit you spot from a car.

Visited with Darmon Richter, Tin Dog and Tbolt - we had driven through Sabile on our drive down through Latvia into Lithuania and did a bit of a head turn. On our drive back to Riga later in the week Darmon was rather keen on visiting what I had called Gnomeville.

If you happen upon driving through Sabile, you cannot miss these as they sit on the edge of the road and you will be greeted by the lady creator of this somewhat spooky collection.














We smiled politely, made our excuses and went on our way....


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October 2015 - Going on me travels

Sorry boys and girls, a lack of posts this month as I'm taking time out with the family. The last week of October Tbolt, Tindog and Darmon Richter will head to Latvia and Lithuania for a little road trip.

Watch this space, good stuff to follow - Monster Munch, Mars Bars and cameras are packed....

But in the meantime the kids loved Willington Cooling Towers - the nipper said "they are called cooling towers coz they are cool !"

Back soon......

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