Pyestock Diaries

For the rest of the year, it appears I did absolutely nothing. I’m at a loss to explain this apparent cessation in my urban exploration, but I suspect Pyestock was the needle which broke the camel's back. I already had a large backlog of explorations to write up, the Rauceby Virtual Asylum was being neglected, my pictures of Warley were still unpublished, I had various commitments to my other websites and my e-mail was backing up spectacularly. To take on this, and a site the magnitude of Pyestock temporarily stunned me, and I simply put it to one side until I was ready to deal with it.

I was also extremely reluctant to document the site by even writing a prefunctatory, temporary "report" on one of the various forums. I had become increasingly aware, through bitter personal experience, that putting sites on the Internet increases their profile within the urban exploration community and the sheer number of visitors leads to extra security vigilance and increased patrols. After publishing my groundbreaking explorations of Cane Hill in early 2002, it had taken eighteen months before the increased number of visitors, trespassers and curious necessitated a change in the security arrangements at the site; many clutching plans and diagrams taken from urbex|uk.

Now with huge bloated forums hungry for new interesting places, a flashmob mentality had taken hold, and the security at sites could be changed after weeks (or even days) to deal with these invations.

Whilst I dithered photos like this started appearing on-line. Tom and I had seen nothing like this! (Interior of the Air House, view north west, from crane gantry). 24|03|07 © Simon Cornwell 2007