Thamesteel, Sheerness May 2016

mookster · Jun 4, 2016

Visited as part of the surprise post-America weekender with Landie Man this time accompanied by Mr. Bones and Mooch.

Thamesteel is a huge former steelworks located in Sheerness, currently as we found out it looks as if they are prepping areas of the site for demolition. A lot of the old railway tracks have been taken up and stacked in piles and there is shiny new heras fencing around many of the buildings. We turned up and made our way in the usual way and ran into the nearest large building. Not more than two minutes later security drove around the corner on one of their patrols so we hunkered down and waited for them to move on. About half an hour later we were inside one of the many huge buildings when we heard security pull up outside again. There was a bit of commotion and suddenly a torch beam shone around one of the entrances to the building, obviously looking for us. At this point all four of us were in different areas of the building and I watched as security walked straight in and up onto one of the walkways very close to me. At this point I also saw either Bones or Mooch doing a military crawl around a corner and I ducked behind one of the control rooms out the way of the security man who walked off further into the building. I realised I needed to make my way up the stairs to my left and into the relative cover of the area where I knew I had last seen Landie so I waited a few minutes and as quietly as I could I crept up the stairs and met Landie. We were silently discussing where to hide when I saw the same security man walking along a catwalk at the end of the building, and he shone his torch directly at me and Landie. At this moment I thought to myself 'we're done', but he kept walking! Me and Landie found a dark alcove to hide in, where we exchanged texts with Bones and Mooch about where they were - it turned out Mooch had a direct line of sight to where security had parked the 4x4 they use. After about half an hour of being quieter than I've ever been before we heard the pickup drive away, and then after we had met up again we heard the security man driving around the outside blaring his horn obviously trying to flush us out.

What followed was a further two hours of nervy exploring trying not to be caught, and as such I ended up with barely any photos which is a little gutting but I got a good story out of it. Finding the lab building we wanted to try and get into last thing sealed, we decided discretion was the better part of valour and to not push our luck any longer, made a brsak for it back to the access point and got out without a fuss.

How me and Landie didn't get seen I do not know, it was a whole series of dumb luck events that stopped us being caught that day.

So here are the few photos I got from a truly epic location.