This morning we got another early start. By 7am, we were in the car on the way to our first location: an abandoned coal mine in Belgium. Upon arriving in the vicinity of the mine, we got our gear and began a walk to get familiarized with the area. As it turned out, the mine is in fact not completely abandoned at this time. While one of the mine buildings is certainly no longer in use, the grounds itself were busy with several workers who were dismantling some rails as well as doing miscellaneous cleaning. At this point we immediately knew that no exploration would take place at this site. While the exploration was likely possible on a weekend, it was definitely not possible on a weekday.
Given that we suddenly had gained several hours of free time, we decided to try and stop over at another couple of locations near Brussels. The first was an abandoned Stella Artois brewery. Sections of the brewery were still remaining (and were definitely abandoned!), however, the building we were interested in had already been demolished. On to the next site!
Our last site of the day was an abandoned train station in the heart of Brussels. To our surprise, this location was not at all abandoned. In fact, it was even open to the public. It looked like the train station terminal had been renovated a little bit (sections of the roof were quite new) and was now housing a ... circus school. Yes, you read that correctly, a circus school. Scattered throughout the entire site were various circus tents and apparatus such as swings, tightropes, and the like.
As we sat on the high speed train back to London, we reflected on the first stage of our trip which has now come to a close. All in all we consider this portion of the trip to be a resounding success. Of all the prime locations that we had planned, we managed to visit all of them. All of the locations we weren’t able to access were secondary locations, so we were never too disappointed. Besides, as with any urban exploration outings, you don’t expect to be 100% successful in accessing sites.
We’ll now have a couple of days to decompress in England before diving back into our urban exploration ventures.