Haikyo – Industrial Site (Original Find)

Recently it’s seemed that the discovery of one haikyo naturally leads to the discovery of another. This site is only a short drive from the electronics factory and we found it during a bit of ‘Let’s find a haikyo’ driving after leaving the factory.

It was too late and too wet for a proper search that day, but we jumped over the barrier on the side road leading up to the site, scrambled over the mound of dirt that had been bulldozed into place to stop vehicles from going up, and quickly counted four or five buildings in the area. Then we went back to the car, marked the location for future exploration and went home.

As it turned out Andrew was either busy or sick the next couple of weekends so in the end I headed back on my own. Early one grey showery morning , I set out determined to finally find out what kind of place we’d stumbled on.

The truth is, even after a much fuller exploration, I’m not sure that I’m any closer to knowing what this place actually was – though I have a couple of theories. Directly ahead from the main area there was an industrial looking building and concrete facade, immediately next to me a low white building that looked totally open, then behind that at a lower level a more domestic looking building.

I headed into the white building first to find that it was nothing but a shell that had been totally gutted. A couple of minutes looking around was enough to confirm that anything of interest has long since been removed.

Deciding that the ‘domestic’ building looked the most promising I decided to leave that for last and headed off up the hill-side  instead. There was no real path anymore, but there were plenty of vicious spiked plants – hurrah! Scratched and wet I made it to the right hand building. A door half way up the end wall opened out onto nothing (suggesting a long departed staircase), but I had to carry on around the side of the building until I found another door.

Inside, the place looked like an electrical substation (or a subsidiary of Frankenstein’s laboratory) full of panels with huge levers and rusted metal blocks with ceramic attachments (stop me if I’m getting too technical)!

Whilst still not spectacular this was certainly more interesting than the first building, and the light coming through the ‘useless’ door from this side very nice. Climbing through the small window (above; bottom right) I carried on up the hill until I came out on top of the concrete facade with a  nice view across the whole site; beyond this there were just hills and trees and a small breeze block shed with another generator (or engine) that seemed to be powering a belt drive of some kind.

From this angle I still couldn’t see what I was actually standing on so I had to climb down the far side of the facade to get to the base of it – passing some pretty impressive puff-balls on the way – from the bottom I could finally see that it was some kind of delivery chute or hopper. This suggested mining to me, but there wasn’t any evidence of an actual mine – so maybe some kind of open cast mining was done here. If that’s the case then I guess whatever it as they were processing ran out and the place closed down.

Having covered the whole hillside I headed back down past where I started off and along a lower path to the final ‘domestic’ building. This was the most intact of the three buildings and was certainly the most lived in as well – it looked like a rest house for the workers with a kitchen and a few tatami rooms. Here and there the floors were collapsing and the whole place had been fairly well ransacked, but there was still more here than in the other places.

One door leading out of the kitchen was firmly stuck shut, but eventually I managed to wrestle it open. The room beyond it was a mess, junk all over the floor like an animals nest – I was about to close the door again when I noticed something…

… the left hand corner of the room was basically carpeted with old porn magazines, including some *interesting* S&M/bondage… literature.

It looked like I’d stumbled on someone’s ‘playroom’ again, albeit much older and apparently no longer used. Still after the discovery of the quite up to date stash in the electronics factory I’m beginning to wonder if his might be a regular thing in previously unrecorded haikyo. Any similar experiences from any other UrbExers??

I decided to do one last sweep around the outside of the building before leaving and almost got a heart attack when I startled three wild pigs a couple of meters outside the front door. They all squealed and ran, and I just stood there looking bewildered – luckily they were all young and way more scared of me than I was of them, so no harm done.

Around the back of the building there was an outhouse with some huge gears in it that was it – I’d covered the whole site.

I walked back to my (carefully concealed) bike and rejoined the road. It was only mid day and getting sunny, so I decided to take the long way home and see if I couldn’t find something else to explore… and you’ll never guess what!

Next time.

You can see the full gallery from the Industrial Site here.

EDITORIAL NOTE: I hope you like the new way I’m laying out the pages, using small pictures and wrapping the text around them was difficult and time-consuming. So I’ve switched to mostly larger collage images, that way I can show more images, without uploading so many individual pictures. The larger size is also much easier to see; I’ll be doing all the future entries this way. Comments or feedback would be appreciated.

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