Cwm Coke works , Beddau Augsut 2012

This was the last port of call on our 2 day trip to Wales.After a less than sound nights sleep in the car which in my opinion was worse than sleeping at Pool Park the night before we headed in not long after the sun had started coming up ,which would explain some of the shots!Really liked this place and even tho we missed a fewrooms with pipes and gauges as tbh 2 nights sod all sleep and clambering around the walkways in hot sunshine we had had enough and packed up.

Relaxed explore in a great location if you like flaky paint ,rust and big hunks of machinery left around.

visited with SpaceInvader and Obscurity while St0rm caught up on some sleep back at the car..

Borrowed history

Cwm Coke's origins lie with the Great Western Railway and it's insatiable hunger for coal. The GWR sunk pits at the Cwm site in 1909 as well as in other areas of the Rhondda, but Cwm didn't become known for it's coke until 1958 when the coking ovens and associated plant for producing coke and refining the by-products of the coking process were installed. During this time the existing colliery site saw a £9 million investment, by the 1970's the two pits 'Margaret' and 'Mildred' and the coking plant were the workplace of 1,500 men this combined effort produced 515,000 tons of coke per annum. The colliery continued production of coal right up until privatisation of the National Coal Board in 1986.

The coking plant remained in use until 2002 producing the low sulfur coke that the foundries of Port Talbot required

On with some pics...

 Thanks for looking

Whittingham Asylum October 2011

Explored with Maniac,SpaceInvader and Obscurity

Brief history borrowed from wiki.....More Here

Whittingham Hospital, whose grounds adjoin the village of Goosnargh, was founded in 1869 and grew to be the largest mental hospital in the country. The hospital pioneered the use of electroencephalograms (EEGs) and during its time it had its own church, farms, railway, telephone exchange, post office, reservoirs, gas works, brewery, orchestra, brass band, ballroom and butchers.^[5]
During the 1970s and 1980s, new drugs and therapies were introduced. Long-stay patients were returned to the community or dispersed to smaller units around Preston. The hospital eventually closed in 1995. ^[6]. The hospital campus is now mostly derelict awaiting redevelopment, but a small psychiatric unit known as Guild Lodge still operates on part of the site.

On with some pics..only a short visit did not cover much due to failing light and heavy rain

Shame i never got to see more of the old girl but what we did see was epic !

Drop Redoubt Dover july 2012...

Quick bit of history and we are offsky

Put simply, a redoubt is a detached outwork of great strength from which soldiers can fire in any direction, without flanking defences. The Drop Redoubt is certainly a formidable looking structure even now, with its massive walls, bombproof casemates and the caponiers providing excellent means of defence. Surrounding the Drop Redoubt is a dry ditch system over which the caponiers would have provided fire against any enemy infiltration. Known as Lines, they served a very similar purpose to mediaeval moats. The East Ditch leads from the Drop Redoubt to the harbour, and on the opposite side of the Redoubt, the Line extends out towards the Citadel. This was essential as the Citadel served as a place of final retreat should the rest of the Western Heights fall to the enemy.

Access to the Redoubt was via a bridge, the evidence of which is still very clear. Once through this entrance, the officers quarters are on the right, and a guard room and cells on the left. The bombproof barracks are on the other side of the structure, and could have housed 90 men. Married soldiers also had quarters here, and they were situated opposite the bombproof barracks.

There are 4 caponiers in the Redoubt, each with a gun room. There are also 3 gun rooms overlooking the East Ditch, and two more gun rooms to provide gunfire over the Line leading to the Citadel. The main magazine is situated by the married quarters, with further magazines attached to each caponier and the gun rooms defending the ditches.

Job done

ST. MARGARETS 5.5” BATTERY ( Z ROCKET ) Revisit July 2012

Did this originally in 2010 and have visited many times,my first report all that time ago i had just got my dslr and tbh the pics where gash and due to it becoming not doable when i saw some pics pop up thought it would be rude not to go down and capture the place again!
Visited with UrbanGinger and Spaveinvader..Big thanks to UG for the leg up as i was slipping in comedy style ..

At St Margaret's Bay there is the underground deep shelter for St Margarets 5.5" Battery. This site was the first one to use the unrotated projectile known as the Z - Rocket which was a anti - aircraft (AA) weapon. It was officially known as a UP or unrotated projectile. It was not particularly accurate, but the thinking was that if fired in large enough amounts an enemy plane just might get hit 

 A few updated pictures from a more recent visit with a fisheye lens