An overdue return to the guilty pleasure that is Huncoat Power Station.
Visited with with Tbolt and two non exploring photography students, I wasn't going to post these pics, but why the hell not.
Let us have a sniff around
I think we need to round up a team for some wool spinning again, we walked from our last session at Huncoat with cracking shots, but that was two years ago..... Follow @fragglehunter
Urbex in the movies, hmmmm - your worst nightmare, the film is going to be either total shite or the next time you go exploring you end up a nervous wreck.
Personally I've always thought Huncoat Powerstation would make a good location for a zombie film, or locals surrounding the building with flaming torches.
I can just picture the marauding hourde (with or without flaming torches) coming across the wasteland.
I came up with a cracking idea for a urbex horror (well I thought so), a pitch as they call it in the trade, but whilst having these idle daydreams at work one day I then started trawling the net as you do.
First nugget I came across was that Paramount Pictures contacted the owners of the ship Duke of Lancaster
Turns out they wanted to use the location for the new Brad Pitt film World War Z.
But nothing came of it by the sounds of things.
So Urbex horror, first up is Urban Explorers. Not one I've seen on the shelves of our local Asda, but here is the trailer in all its glory.
Oh, here we go a longer one
Next up, Death Tunnel, set in an old hospital/asylum type place so not sure about the name of the film. Looks interesting this one (to me).
Anyway, here is my pitch (it was a shit day at the office) that I dream't up...
Asylum Seeker - leave nothing but footprints
(nice tagline don't you think ? ok, no)
Urbexers explore the rotting buildings around us.
Documenting the decay of industry & the forgotten world around us.
Ever wondered whats in that old building you pass as you run for your train ?
What would you find ?
The doors that slam and the floors that creak...
Dare you enter the abandoned asylum ? Sprawling houses of madness hiding the many dark secrets best forgotten.
You avoid the security, the metal thieves, the weed farmers and the homeless in the decaying victorian factories. But the asylum is empty ? slowly rotting....
What lurks in the shadows ?
Waiting
For the kill !
Leaving nothing, but footprints...
Hang on, hang on, if you are a film producer, email me, I have more ideas - Lawn of the Dead, just think Crown Green Bowling with zombies, it has hit written all over it.
Huncoat Powerstation for those who don't know it, is, well a dead power station. If Huncoat was a restaurant it would be a Mcdonalds, possibly a drive thru - a guilty pleasure.
Is it Urbex ? Well it was was a one point, but you can now simply walk in from the side of the road, its been stripped naked of anything remotely metal, anything burnable has been burnt, anything you could possibly vandalize has been.
So whats the attraction ?
Well the silence, on wet day the dripping noises, its location, its ease of entry, its graffiti, it is simply Huncoat.
For many urban explorers in Northern England their first explore was a Huncoat mooch and its a place that just keeps giving with the graffiti changing all the time.
Many non Urbex photographers pop into Huncoat, its that kind of place.....
My first trip to Huncoat, was pretty much my first Urbex mooch, so Urban Spaceman and I visited one saturday lunch time. As I said above, the first thing you notice is the silence.
We came, we mooched, we snapped away on the cameras, we where Urbexers ! Then the feeling someone else was in the building, we are newbies in all this and we stop and listen - silence and dripping water.
We stop again, silence, and off we go upstairs and
You see, its that kind of place, want to do a photoshoot for a sports catalogue this it would seem is the place to do it.
I must at this point drop into the blog a shout to the girls Zoie and Yvette, and plug the website of Zoie, the quality of her photography blows me away and she does have an urbex interest, just check out her ballerina shots at Rosebank Mill http://www.zoie-photography.com/
- Should say they gave us some pointers to a few local explores.
Any way on with the pics
Part 2 to follow but in the mean time, see you at Huncoat.
