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Pyestock Diaries

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Plans were made and I pencilled in two return trips in March and further ones as time allowed. By now, one or two reports had appeared on the forums, and their contents only reinforced the sheer size and variety of the site. I was unable to match anything posted with our pictures, and eventually worked out that other people were using a western infiltration point, whilst Tom and I had approached from the north. This meant our experiences, and the buildings explored, were very different.

However, it was a poor and frustrating experience simply trying to figure everything out. The reports were useless, locations weren’t described, and the current, pointless vogue for "macro" phtotography meant that many "explorers" simply travelled hundreds of miles, got into the site, got soaked, and spent a few wretched hours in the cold January gloom for a close-up picture of a control panel, some guy in a pipe and a random sprocket. If it was being presented as art then I wouldn’t have minded so much, feeling more inclined to reject it as art; but presented as documentation of a building then it was practically useless.

To my horror, two trips followed one, people made other plans and slowly the number of reports and pictures started to snowball: Pyestock was now well and truly on the radar.

Numerous reports were appearing on the forums, multiple postings from different explorers almost every day. Pyestock was awash and it would only be a matter of time before the owners got wise to the situation and shut the site down. The sheer number of visitors could not be ignored. And finally, a week before Tom and I were due to return, I read with horror that an infiltration point had been found and patched up. The site was being locked down.

Was I too late?

© Simon Cornwell 2007

Does "Macro" photography have a place documenting buildings? Nice art, but utterly useless otherwise. (Control panel of Exhauster No 10)
31|03|07 © Simon Cornwell 2007