Pyestock Diaries

With two first timers at Pyestock in the group our exploration turned into a guided tour as we took them to places of interest. This suited me as I had unfinished business with almost every building on the site but I was anxious to explore Battle Test House as I wanted to increase the number of buildings we’d seen. I also personally found the group too large and worried that we’d get slowed down by the sheer logistics of moving around carefully i.e. people wanting to see different things, waiting for other explorers to get out of shot, moving slowly from place to place. It suddenly occurred to me why macro photography was so popular: those explorers tended to congregate in huge groups and because they were massively paranoid of any form of recognisable features, they had to take close ups as there was always someone else wandering around in shot.

The Air House was majestic and cool. Alex pointed to the gantry. "Can we go up there?" Of course, this is urbex: if you can get up there, if you think it’s safe up there, you can go up there. I quickly checked out the ladder in the corridor at the back of the control room and found it simply gave access to a high level platform. (This was disappointing but allowed me to cross another mystery off my list).

We showed the guys the other key areas: control room (looking shabbier, but sign the board neatly), control room panel access corridor, meter corridor, the "brown" corridor and an air filter. It took some time, but as all visitors do, they loved the place and I was able to get some final shots.

Southern view along the Air House control room from the northern raised platform. 21|04|07 © Simon Cornwell 2007