144. Harwich Beacon Fort
I hate exploring alone. Ever since I done it and ended up in A&E alone I vowed never to do it again.
However I had just bought a new GoPro head camera and was desperate to try it out. I sequentially asked 12 other explorers if they’d come out with me, all said “Yes” and then “No”. Determined to get out, I went it alone.
There’s a mass of in depth information on this place, probably too much, on sites like SubBrit & Wikipedia. I won’t try and put it into my own words, I’ll just get it wrong.
I headed straight to the observation tower:
The view over the rest of the site was impressive, I felt like a kid in a sweet shop not knowing where to explore next!
No handrail tho…
View through the metal shutters towards the docks.
(I’ll apologise now for the number of photos which have a silhouette of me in them. Harwich is on the East coast, so all of the emplacements face East, and I visited in the morning…)
The first emplacement:
I actually became quite comfortable being on the site alone, especially at the higher points, and I decided to relax for a few minutes just staring out to sea.
Anyone know what this is? Some sort of conveyor system?
I love how this site is just covered in unusual shaped concrete structures.
Hmm, then I noticed a brand new mountain bike leaning up inside this one:
Maybe I wasn’t alone?
As I came round the corner into the last tower I bumped into a guy kneeling in the doorway, furiously err…’helping himself’
“Shit!” I declared
“Shit!” He declared.
As we made eye contact he blew his load. He looked mortified, I looked the other way and tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed anything (not very convincing) I looked back to see him quickly waddling away towards the bike. “I’m never bloody exploring solo again” I muttered to myself.
As I was making my way out of the site (being careful not to follow matey boy too closely) I heard a large group noisily entering the site. Definitely time to go.
I was quite pleased with the GoPro, I’ve got a lot to learn tho: I was doing a few jumps between buildings, (I’m nowhere near fit enough to be a free runner, but have no problem chucking myself off a two storey building) Unfortunately; when I was pressing the record button, I was out of sequence. As it was on my forehead I couldn’t see when the red light was flashing and when it was not. Therefore I have a few bits of footage where I’m approaching a really good bit, then I turn the recording off. Then I resume it after I’ve landed! Luckily I had left my SLR set up, so all was not lost.
Cheers for looking:
However I had just bought a new GoPro head camera and was desperate to try it out. I sequentially asked 12 other explorers if they’d come out with me, all said “Yes” and then “No”. Determined to get out, I went it alone.
There’s a mass of in depth information on this place, probably too much, on sites like SubBrit & Wikipedia. I won’t try and put it into my own words, I’ll just get it wrong.
I headed straight to the observation tower:
The view over the rest of the site was impressive, I felt like a kid in a sweet shop not knowing where to explore next!
No handrail tho…
View through the metal shutters towards the docks.
(I’ll apologise now for the number of photos which have a silhouette of me in them. Harwich is on the East coast, so all of the emplacements face East, and I visited in the morning…)
The first emplacement:
I actually became quite comfortable being on the site alone, especially at the higher points, and I decided to relax for a few minutes just staring out to sea.
Anyone know what this is? Some sort of conveyor system?
I love how this site is just covered in unusual shaped concrete structures.
Hmm, then I noticed a brand new mountain bike leaning up inside this one:
Maybe I wasn’t alone?
As I came round the corner into the last tower I bumped into a guy kneeling in the doorway, furiously err…’helping himself’
“Shit!” I declared
“Shit!” He declared.
As we made eye contact he blew his load. He looked mortified, I looked the other way and tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed anything (not very convincing) I looked back to see him quickly waddling away towards the bike. “I’m never bloody exploring solo again” I muttered to myself.
As I was making my way out of the site (being careful not to follow matey boy too closely) I heard a large group noisily entering the site. Definitely time to go.
I was quite pleased with the GoPro, I’ve got a lot to learn tho: I was doing a few jumps between buildings, (I’m nowhere near fit enough to be a free runner, but have no problem chucking myself off a two storey building) Unfortunately; when I was pressing the record button, I was out of sequence. As it was on my forehead I couldn’t see when the red light was flashing and when it was not. Therefore I have a few bits of footage where I’m approaching a really good bit, then I turn the recording off. Then I resume it after I’ve landed! Luckily I had left my SLR set up, so all was not lost.
Cheers for looking:
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