I'm not going to bother with any history of Pyestock because unusually the explore wasn't the primary objective here. This was something a little different.
You know what it's like when you sit around with a mate chatting about "how cool it would be to do this" and "wouldn't it be funny to do that", well that's how Santastock was conceived. I was chatting away with my mate one bored evening about exploring and he said wouldn't it be funny to get loads of people in one place. I told him it's done all the time, big groups of people go underground in Wiltshire and have a bit of a party. He said, no, no no, I'm talking about somewhere bigger, somewhere with danger of being caught, and to make it even more difficult, in fancy dress, wouldn't it be cool to pull something like that off? So, I decided to find out, I started a Facebook page and invited every explorer I know and opened the invite to any explorers they knew etc etc. Eventually we had a group of about 100 people and plans were put in place! Early one morning at the end of December, we would descend on Pyestock under the cover of darkness, all dressed as Santa and take some pictures.
We arrived at 6am and made our way inside and headed for the air house, our meeting point. We were the second lot inside and numbers quickly began to grow. We waited in the control room and watched as groups of fellow explorers made their way through the air house, the control room was very quickly almost full up, I'm sure, the busiest it's been since the place closed down.
Light slowly began to fill the air house and we could finally see some new faces and old.
It wasn't long until the festivities began and we were all lining up for group shots
The noise of 50+ explorers becoming a little complacent was starting to get un-nerving that our position would be spotted, we almost decided to go off and explore in a smaller group as we had a separate agenda for the day and wanted to see a couple of parts of the site that I still hadn't got round to seeing from previous visits. I really wanted a group shot in Cell 4 because of the scale of it and how cool it would look but it's a much more open building and much more risky than the air house. We hadn't come this far for nothing though so we found a nice discreet route into Cell 4 and got the shot I'd hoped for!
Mingling Santas
Miss Santa (Hope you don't mind me posting this)
We then bid farewell to our fellow explorers and set off to find Cells 1 and 2, the only bits of the site I'd never seen. I knew they were smaller but still quite special and I was glad I did. Some of the other Santa's did a mass walkout so we waited patiently on the air house gantry. Cells 1 and 2 are close to security so the mass walkout was just the diversion we needed. Sure enough a guard followed by about 10 santas walked around the corner and headed for the exit. We took our chance and headed for cells 1 and 2.
We first entered Cell 2 where there's still an engine rigged up to the test bed. A fantastic site to see!
And then to Cell 1 before heading out and home!
You know what it's like when you sit around with a mate chatting about "how cool it would be to do this" and "wouldn't it be funny to do that", well that's how Santastock was conceived. I was chatting away with my mate one bored evening about exploring and he said wouldn't it be funny to get loads of people in one place. I told him it's done all the time, big groups of people go underground in Wiltshire and have a bit of a party. He said, no, no no, I'm talking about somewhere bigger, somewhere with danger of being caught, and to make it even more difficult, in fancy dress, wouldn't it be cool to pull something like that off? So, I decided to find out, I started a Facebook page and invited every explorer I know and opened the invite to any explorers they knew etc etc. Eventually we had a group of about 100 people and plans were put in place! Early one morning at the end of December, we would descend on Pyestock under the cover of darkness, all dressed as Santa and take some pictures.
We arrived at 6am and made our way inside and headed for the air house, our meeting point. We were the second lot inside and numbers quickly began to grow. We waited in the control room and watched as groups of fellow explorers made their way through the air house, the control room was very quickly almost full up, I'm sure, the busiest it's been since the place closed down.
Light slowly began to fill the air house and we could finally see some new faces and old.
It wasn't long until the festivities began and we were all lining up for group shots
The noise of 50+ explorers becoming a little complacent was starting to get un-nerving that our position would be spotted, we almost decided to go off and explore in a smaller group as we had a separate agenda for the day and wanted to see a couple of parts of the site that I still hadn't got round to seeing from previous visits. I really wanted a group shot in Cell 4 because of the scale of it and how cool it would look but it's a much more open building and much more risky than the air house. We hadn't come this far for nothing though so we found a nice discreet route into Cell 4 and got the shot I'd hoped for!
Mingling Santas
Miss Santa (Hope you don't mind me posting this)
We then bid farewell to our fellow explorers and set off to find Cells 1 and 2, the only bits of the site I'd never seen. I knew they were smaller but still quite special and I was glad I did. Some of the other Santa's did a mass walkout so we waited patiently on the air house gantry. Cells 1 and 2 are close to security so the mass walkout was just the diversion we needed. Sure enough a guard followed by about 10 santas walked around the corner and headed for the exit. We took our chance and headed for cells 1 and 2.
We first entered Cell 2 where there's still an engine rigged up to the test bed. A fantastic site to see!
And then to Cell 1 before heading out and home!
