A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away....
Early March 2016 I was sat scrolling through Flickr on a day off from work. It was the usual stuff, abandoned factories, the occasional naughty track picture, rooftops. Something caught my eye however. A shot taken from in a bush offering a teasing glance of the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I knew instantly that this had to be found, no matter where in the UK I was going to find it. A few hours and Google searches later I knew where they were filming this particular scene and texts were sent to see who was around that very night.far away....
We barreled across the M25 towards our target for the night, the boyish excitement was unreal knowing we were soon to be face to face with the Millennium Falcon. We parked up at 2:30AM and entered the site not long after. Trekking to the Falcon would involve walking through the surrounding woodland in total darkness as we were unaware of any security that may be guarding the set, we took no risk as we imagined that a multi-billion dollar franchise would have the full works regarding intruder prevention. Frequent stops were needed to check that we were heading in the right direction, a quick glance at Google maps was all that was needed but just a second looking at a bright screen ruins any king of night vision that your eyes gets used to, meaning we were stopping for 5 minutes at a time to let our eyes adjust to the darkness.
The woodlands were full of strange noises, hoots, howls and snapping twigs all around us. I was genuinely on edge, who knows what kind of life our party of 2 would bump into, human or animal, both of which we were looking to avoid. After traipsing through the undergrowth a light could be made out in the distance, we slowly edged towards it careful not to snap any branches underfoot. We sat in the bushes and listened for any signs of life but all seemed quiet..
The set was build on the side of a steep hill, at the bottom was the Falcon, at the top was the remains of a set that had been already used and it was being demolished. We thought best to cross the area at the top and stay in the bushes that lead back down to the Falcon. On getting to the top of the hill we could see a car parked right in the middle of the top lot, not wanting to chance it we went mid-way back down the hill and opted to go inside the set as it was being supported on scaffolding.
Thats when we saw it
There it was, life size, intricately detailed, ours for the taking.
We maneuvered our way up onto the set to get a better view and saw the security cabin with a few cars parked outside, the light in the cabin was on and it was fairly close, the floodlights eliminated any hope of shadow cover we might have but we thew caution to the wind and set about placing our tripods. This was too good to not fully enjoy.
placed on the high end of the set up the hill was a giant dead looking tree, we went up to inspect it to find that it had a doorway into it. We went inside the tree but it only led to the scaffolding behind the set. At the top of the hill we could look across the whole of the Falcon as the daylight was starting to smear itself across the dark sky. It was easy to forget that we were less than a mile from the M3.
I visited the set twice in total, each time accompanied by a different person, the story above is a combination of the two trips and the images also. Most of the story above is from the first trip, but the section about going inside the Falcon is from the second.
This trip was unreal and it will remain in my top 3 adventures probably forever just because it is Star Wars. I look foreword to sitting in the cinema at the midnight premiere and seeing which characters trace our steps.
May the Force be with you...
