Name or Alias: We are known on this forum by my wife's old on line nickname "TeeJF" though she has become Tonto due to "wearing" a mask to obscure her identity on some of our uploaded pictures. I dunno what I am called but I answer to most things...
Location: The north west.
1.When did you start exploring and what triggered the urbex 'virus' for you?
I have always explored, I just didn't realise doing it has a name. When I come to think of it my father was the same and I can remember him taking me in to look around abandoned places on occasion. When I was a kid he once explored a disused building whilst he was waiting to pick me up from something, and found a set of pram wheels which he used to build me a go cart. The same goes for my wife (who is my co-explorer) though she didn't really get the bug big time until we started wreck diving. Now that I am rather older wreck diving holds less of an allure so exploring inside interesting places ABOVE water has become far more attractive. We both have an enormous interest in ancient Egypt and have explored inside many tombs which were closed so I guess urbexing is something we have always done. She used to play in some old farm buildings as a child and has always enjoyed formal tours of places like Fountains Abbey etc.
2. have you seen any big changes in the urbex scene. In terms of attitude towards/or a massive increase in popularity of urban exploring?
I couldn't say because I haven't followed the "scene" in the past. I found this forum when someone sent me a link to a building I had once worked in, and it was only then that I realised urbex had a following and forums et all. Having said that I have been surprised at the number of people who are into it, especially girls, who I had never really considered would find such stuff of interest, especially if it meant getting mucky - I thought my wife was an oddball because she doesn't think twice about ploughing through mud or squeezing under a fallen wall inside a WW1 fort! Now I know she's just one of many in terms of the level of interest she has in it.
3.Where has been your favourite place to explore, and have you been faced with any particularly dangerous or risky experiences?
That's a hard one because we have visited so many awesome places. Beelitz Heilstatten TB sanatorium in Germany was so epic we went back to Berlin twice and spent a total of 4 days exploring the place so I guess I'd have to chose that. Chateau Miranda in Belgium is simply beautiful and a monster explore - one of our first "formal" urbexs as it were - it makes one so sad to see it rotting away. Lillesden Girls School was practically another Chateau Miranda and our explore was so relaxed it became an absolute joy. And for wierd reasons we enjoyed exploring an old people's care home recently which was full of artifacts and looked like the residents had gone out for the day - the phone still worked (and rang twice whilst we were there!!!), there were lights on in the cellar and even food in the kitchen. And yet externally it was boarded, the windows were rotting for want of paint, and the garden was a total jungle! Finally getting into some of the WW1 forts in Verdun was absolutely great but one in particular - Fort du Regret - blew our minds because of how intact it was - the painted labelling on the walls is still original and there was even a machine gun - albeit damaged beyond repair - in one of the turrets with an ammunition clip on the breach feed mechanism! TJ says for her it was Fort du Regret in Verdun too but she struggled to chose between that and Fort de Genicourt, also in Verdun.
As to risky then yes. But the thing is the risk you take is usually pretty carefully calculated, you don't just barge in like a bull in a china shop. The trouble is the urge to go that bit further into a building, see that little bit more, get that aerial picture, can cloud your judgement. But as a matter of course in urbex there are many buildings with rotten floors and I went straight through one recently in Whittingham Asylum - fortunately the drop was all of a foot! I stood on a floor in Denbigh Asylum and felt the carpet being "sucked" down a hole under me, and we have walked along ceiling beams over a 12 foot drop in Miranda because the floor had rotted away. But possibly our riskiest encounter was at a WW1 fort in Verdun which we were trying to get into. We could not find a way until we came to the remains of a counterscarp gallery that had been hit with a seriously large shell. We squeezed in under the wall and once inside we thought we could see a route in to the fort proper by squeezing under the back wall which had also partially collapsed. TJ is much smaller than me so she rolled under what amounted to several tons of concrete held up by nothing more than a few strands of rebar. When I think of it now it makes my blood run cold though stupidly at the time we were both so fired up with excitement the risk didn't ocurr to us.
Sadly the tunnel beyond which should have led us under the moat and into the fort proper had been completely bricked up.
4.Do you think of yourself as a photographer who explorers or as an explorer who takes pictures?
Definitely an explorer who takes a camera along to try to capture memories for when I'm even more wrinkly. That is also why I have created a sprawkling personal urbex and diving website so that we have our own virtual photo album we can dip into anywhere when we want to show our friends the pix. To be honest I'm no great shakes as a photographer and until now have only used an automatic handy snappy. It is literally yesterday that I finally bit the bullet and bought a decent camera. TJ is very much in the same position and has only started taking pics about three months ago. Having said that she appears to have a flair for it. But there are some urbex photographers who excell, and many are on this forum. We are also continually amazed by the work of some of the photographers who shift everything in the opposite direction and don't explore in the normal sense but use their surroundings purely as a back drop to create "urban photo art" with models, props etc. An example of this would be a young woman called Elle Dunne who has a site called
Contamination Zone (click for link).
Hope that helps... PM if you want to know anything else.