Although to be honest I'd probably be doing less well if I didn't have my hobbies to put my energy into. My hobbies came about as a way of coping with mental health anyway, and now that the world has slowed down, I'm finding the time to get on with all that mental self care that the daily grind of modern life doesn't allow time for. Everyone responds to a crisis differently. Who knew that my way would be with sunshine, smiles and angel queefs? A lot of people are stressing out over lockdown though, and this means that social media is a cesspit, more so than usual. Coronavirus? More like Groanervirus! My advice is to turn off the news and use this as an opportunity to embrace your passions. Maybe it's painting, maybe it's masturbating, or maybe it's both at the same time, in which case grow an afro and make a Youtube series called Bob Toss or something.
Speaking of videos, my old accomplice Jess has come out of hiding, and started editing videos about places we visited ages ago. Remember that nuclear monitoring bunker by the sea? Well you can watch it here. Remember that amazing Middle Earth looking hermitage? Watch that video here.
Want to read my latest blog? Keep reading. You're on it.
Today I want to talk about this really amazing place that I visited with my friend and former work colleague Emma. We were in some far flung distant land for business reasons, and even though our company had booked us a hotel, we decided against the conventional options of getting drunk and watching TV. Fuck that. Great things are never achieved in comfort zones, and so we set off on an adventure. Emma didn't quite know what to expect- my world isn't hers. But the truth is this one even threw me.
On a quiet night this place looks like little more than a run-down shack rotting away in a field next to a railway line. However it houses a wonderful secret. Every now and again, trains would hurtle by, filled with passengers who had no idea that an important chunk of history was right here under their noses.
Granted, even we didn't know exactly what we were getting into.
What we've got here is the remains of a railway siding, with the remnants of narrow-gauge tracks. Old photos do exist, showing that the railway siding did extent beyond this point, and in spite of its current condition was once full of activity.
(Photo from 1943, and not mine, obviously.)
And yes, those are military personnel, and yes they're in the middle of transfering munitions from a train to one of the platforms wagons. But where did the wagons go? Well once inside the shack, the siding then slopes downwards, deep underground.
Once underground the rails turn left, through some big metal doors that would have once secured the facility. They've since been forced open, allegedly by a bunch of travelers who lived on the site a decade or so ago.
Basically, this facility was for the covert transference of munitions from the railway to a nearby depot back in the 1940s.
In spite of the British military originally not taking the invention of the airplane particularly seriously, the first world war was brutal enough to give them pause for thought. I've actually covered the Germans aerial input in world war one when I explored the factory where the Fokker planes were built. The first world war was brutal. Some refer to it as less a war and more a massacre, and the British military were not taking any chances. It was decided that they should build underground bomb-proof storage areas, and then transport the bombs to it underground, invisible to aerial reconnaissance.
There
were plenty of abandoned mines and quarrys in the local area, and many of these
existing tunnels were joined up, reinforced with concrete and laid with
internal roads to make a massive subterranean bomb depot. It had
six entrances connecting some five miles of tunnels, of which this is
the only one still extant. This itself isn't a converted mine. It was purpose built to connect to what was there already. The railway itself didn't come close enough to the depot, and the road up to it was abysmal. but this underground rail yard allowed the munitions to be
sorted and transfered underground, hidden from the attention of any
potential enemies.
Construction of the tunnel actually started in 1937, but it wasn't operational until 1940. After the war, the facility was closed, but kept in operational condition until the 1950s. Some time after that it was abandoned and lost to nature, at least until the 1980s when it was opened up as a museum. At the time the facilities interior was still pristine and had all of the old munitions wagons silently waiting for the time they'd be useful again.
(Photo credit- Nick Catford, 1985)
The museum failed, and closed in 1990. The wagons were all sold, and the doors at the bottom of the access slope locked up.
But maybe it was the exposure that the tunnel had in its museum days. Maybe it was the introduction of the internet. Either way, the tunnel wasn't a secret anymore, and thirty years later, it looks like this.
There's been fires down here, either arson or homeless folks trying to keep warm. We also found the remnants of fireworks, the smell of which still hung in the air, that were likely set off by teenagers mucking about. And as you can see, the local graffiti artists have been down here as well, to use its walls as a canvas.
Alongside the rails are the remains of various offices. It was down here that the munitions would be sorted before moving on to the depot. In its glory days some 1000 tons of ammunition would come through each day, with the conveyance system speedily carrying it off to the depot. It was a very efficient system.
Prior to the tunnels completion, an aerial ropeway was used, and even after the tunnel was completed this was retained as a backup, used if the conveyor system broke down for some reason. In 1944 it also came in useful in the build up to D-Day, the allied invasion of German-occupied France. During this time, both the underground tunnel and the aerial ropeway were active 24/7 for thirty days.
Here are the remnants of the urinals. I guess some people urinate lava.
These are still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
A paranormal group in 2010 did report that the offices are haunted. Some claim to have seen a short chap with glasses, and some claim to have heard someone whistling. More morbidly someone suggested that something "unpleasant" had happened to a woman down here, and that her voice could be heard sometimes.
That all sounds very intriguing, but we saw, heard and sensed nothing. The only people down here were me and Emma.
I actually have a fondness for this kind of graffiti. It's not art, but it's not simple tagging either. It's like shower thoughts, and there's often some kind of witty retort. Someone has said "Babies are the absence of condoms," and someone else has written "No shit."
I'm not sure what this contraption is, but it does resemble an electric transformer. I might be wrong. It's not my area of expertise.
Now I know what this contraption is! But even so, its presence here is baffling because the nearest Morrisons is just over three miles away.
The sorting yard concludes at this tunnel. Once sorted, the munitions would be conveyed up this tunnel to the depot. We were quite eager to see where it led, enthusiastically taking the plunge into the darkness, not knowing at the time that it's 1.25 miles long.
It also has an uphill gradient of 1:8 which is a little steeper than a wheelchair ramp. Needless to say, we got a good workout.
Dotting the tunnel are the remants of the conveyance equipment, which is cool to see but odd in that its remains are so inconsistent throughout the length of the tunnel. It's like they started to remove it but then gave up. In likelihood it was removed by metal thieves.
There's some interesting graffiti down here. Here's Master Splinter.
"I never had my way."
Why is this written in big letters in a tunnel? Sometimes, I can't help but wonder about the context.
Zombie Pluto, somewhat reminiscent of the Von Kiki and Honey zombie graffiti in the old Fokker factory, but not as good.
Of course, someone always draws a penis.
But here is next-level penis graffiti. Someone has scrawled a fifteen-foot penis across the ceiling of the tunnel.
I couldn't even fit it all in one shot. Fucking Hell.
Here's a farting fox, distressed by its flatulence.
Here's a monkey painting... something!
I guess it's open to interpretation.
What, are we in Telford?
As we went deeper, so did the bizarre nature of the graffiti. I mean whats even going on here?
Lewis Cooper is a pussy, and so it Oscar Leaks.
This is pretty awesome. It looks like hundreds of water droplets preparing to plummet to the floor but they were actually solid to touch. What we have here are the early stages of stalactites. That is, the minerals from dripping water are forming icicle-like formations, commonly found in caves.
At this point the tunnel changes from rectangular to arched. The reason is that the tunnel ascends into a hill, in which the bomb depot resided. At first, where the tunnel was the most shallow and closest to the surface, it was built and covered in dirt, but as it goes deeper into the hillside it needed to be bored, and here is where the two different construction methods meet.
Someones drawn a door into the side of the tunnel. If only there really was more tunnels leading off...
Bloody Hell...
This is all drawn here in pencil, some with remarkable cursive handwriting and little doodles, some of it dated to the 1940s. If this is genuine then its incredible that it's still down here. And there's actually a lot to support that it is genuine! When the place was active, it was vitally important that boxes and shells were correctly spaced apart, and so men were stationed at various points of the tunnel, given the simple but boring task of monitoring the munitions coming up the conveyor to make sure that nothing had slipped off or moved.
It sounds like a really easy job but as you can guess, standing in a gloomy tunnel to watch a conveyor belt for several hours is probably about as much fun as watching paint dry or going to a Kings of Leon concert. I mean, how often did something go wrong? Because that would be the only time the job got slightly less boring. These doodles could be the remnants of someone trying to keep themselves entertained.
If they did notice a problem, an emergency switch could shut off the conveyor, and once the problem was solved, the worker would signal it by turning the light off and on again. The conveyor would then be reactivated.
Incidentally its around the pencil doodles that the paranormal group from 2010 reported having objects thrown at them, but nothing like that occured on our visit. If there are ghosts here, we're in their good books.
The group also reported quite a feeling of hostility at the end if the tunnel, which we found ourselves now approaching.
Given the tiresome incline of the 1.25 mile walk, we definitely felt a sense of achievement once we got to the end. At least, I did. Emma was hungry, and we had a 1.25 mile walk back to fresh air. Luckily it was all downhill.
This would be where the tunnel joins the ammo depot, although it was blocked off when the main depot was purchased and started being actively used. To my knowledge there's no way in to it, and this is where the tunnel adventure ends. The following day we did take a look at the actual surface building of the depot and found it an active premises with real life humans scurrying around. Alas, its many, many vast subterranean secrets elude me for now.
But while this is the end of the line as far as this tunnel goes, there are numerous mines in the area, one of which allegedly has a tedious 200ft belly crawl tunnel into the depot. That means of entry was blocked off in 1940 by the military, but reopened in 1989 when the depot was a museum. Presumably its once again blocked.
I've never explored a mine, and personally I'd like some experience before I go slithering down a crawl space. Emma certainly wasn't up for it. But I will return to check out the mines at some point, have no doubt.
Sadly I also wanted to check out some of the pillboxes that guarded the railway sidings, but Emma was quite insistent that we return to the hotel for food, having agreed to an adventure and not realising that she'd be walking for more than two miles. She was hungry and let's face it, we know what pillboxes look like. They show up in this blog all the time. My appetite for adventure had certainly been satisfied so I was okay with returning to the hotel for our company-paid meals.
That's all for today. Next time I'm checking out a big spooky building with a creepy legend, and then I'll be returning home to blog about something in Shropshire. In the meantime, follow my Instagram, like my Facebook and follow my Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
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