For as long as I can remember being interested in this hobby, one site had always been at the top spot of, or hovering just below the top spot of my 'to do list', and that location was the HF6 Blast Furnace in Belgium. For ages I would sit admiring photos of it's enormous rusting beauty, never having got there myself. Well that has finally changed!
It did take me four attempts however - my first visit we were spotted by pesky nosey neighbours so scarpered, the second visit we ran into contractors entering the site just as we were about to, and the third attempt would have gone off perfectly if a blizzard hadn't decided to happen the day we had planned to do it...but was it worth the wait? Oh god yes, a million times over. By far and away my favourite location I have done to date out of all the 200+ I have explored.
This time we parked up and proceeded to spy a dishevelled-looking hobo wandering up and down the street outside our access point, we didn't take much notice but as we walked along he saw us with our gear and asked us what we were doing, I mimed a photo taking acion and he piped up in near perfect English 'oh you want to take photos in there?' and then proceeded to tell us exactly how to go about getting into the place! Best hobo ever!
Once in the site it took us a good 45 minutes to work out the way over the internal razor wire fence (nasty stuff!) but by a stroke of luck when we were on the verge of packing it in we worked it out, and the rest is history. Filthy dirty, oily, coal dust-covered and a very sweaty couple of hours later we were back outside the site badly in need of breakfast, all of which means I'll be going back to finish the rest of the enormous site off at some stage
I took a lot of photos so here is a fair few of them. Sadly my photos aren't the best they could be, I mostly stuck to handheld stuff as my jaw was too busy being on the floor for the most part - and as you'll see the lighting wasn't the best either...
More here https://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/sets/72157646063466173/
It did take me four attempts however - my first visit we were spotted by pesky nosey neighbours so scarpered, the second visit we ran into contractors entering the site just as we were about to, and the third attempt would have gone off perfectly if a blizzard hadn't decided to happen the day we had planned to do it...but was it worth the wait? Oh god yes, a million times over. By far and away my favourite location I have done to date out of all the 200+ I have explored.
This time we parked up and proceeded to spy a dishevelled-looking hobo wandering up and down the street outside our access point, we didn't take much notice but as we walked along he saw us with our gear and asked us what we were doing, I mimed a photo taking acion and he piped up in near perfect English 'oh you want to take photos in there?' and then proceeded to tell us exactly how to go about getting into the place! Best hobo ever!
Once in the site it took us a good 45 minutes to work out the way over the internal razor wire fence (nasty stuff!) but by a stroke of luck when we were on the verge of packing it in we worked it out, and the rest is history. Filthy dirty, oily, coal dust-covered and a very sweaty couple of hours later we were back outside the site badly in need of breakfast, all of which means I'll be going back to finish the rest of the enormous site off at some stage
I took a lot of photos so here is a fair few of them. Sadly my photos aren't the best they could be, I mostly stuck to handheld stuff as my jaw was too busy being on the floor for the most part - and as you'll see the lighting wasn't the best either...
More here https://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/sets/72157646063466173/
