Another weekend, another location that needs to be visited. This time, we went to an abandoned (duh :) castle somewhere in Belgium.

We had gotten a tip from fellow urbexers, and decided to check it out. As far as I know, no one had visited that place before. Finding the castle wasn't hard, since you could see it from the main road, but that didn't mean it was easy to get in. Since the only "official" entrance to the domain around the castle passed right along some villas, which had clear signs of activity, we decided to look for another way.

I had spotted another road on the GPS that led to the other side of the domain. Unfortunately, it was only a very muddy dirt road, used by local farmers. After a while, we found ourselves walking along the forest of the domain, spotted a weak part in the fence around it, which we could jump :)

But as it turned out, that was only the easy part: there were no real paths on the domain. So we had to walk a few hundred meters in shoulder-height nettles, while we tried to make our own path while guessing what the direction towards the castle was. Fortunately for me, I was wearing long trousers (experience tells me that this is a wise thing to do while urbexing), but unfortunately, I was only wearing a simple T-shirt. So I ended up with having itchy arms for the rest of the day :).

Progress was slow, we weren't absolutely sure we were going in the right direction, but in the end, we could spot the castle. What we saw was already worth it: a beautiful green pasture, filled with sheep, that were grazing along the pond that is located around the castle.

We took some shots from the outside, while at the same time trying to see if we could spot an entrance. It didn't look to good, all windows and doors were barricaded. But on the other side of the castle, we did spot an entrance that seemed to lead into the basement. When we entered, it became clear that the basement was used as a stable for the sheep. We found a door that lead upstairs, and so we entered the ground floor (pretty much the only floor of three that was still not collapsed).

In there we found stacks of hay, a stairwell without stairs, lots of animal cages and lots of remains of the top floors :). It was there I took this shot:

It's a shame that the rest (what was left of it after more than 50 years of abandonment) of the castle was in such a bad shape, so we only spent time on ground floor. But it sure was all worth it.

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This saturday, my girlfriend and I went to Aalst, to visit the abandoned factory Du Parc. Du Parc was a brand of stockings that was manufactured in there, along with other things like socks and underwear.

Finding the entrance and getting in was pretty easy, and once we were in, we quickly started scouting the place (over time, we've come to realize that it's better to get a quick view of the whole place, so you can focus on those parts that are the nicest to shoot. It has happened before that we discover the most beautiful parts at the end of the day, when it is getting dark :).

A large part of the factory was blackened by a fire that had once raged in it (officials decided that the fire was no accident). There was still lots of semi-burned paperwork lying around. I must say, the traces of the fire produced a very nice color pallet. The production areas themselves were in no better state: leaking, collapsed and even missing roofs, rotten floors, oil spills, ...

There was one particular thing about the place: slogans were painted on most of the walls. The slogans themselves were incoherent messages, and ranged from (translated from dutch) "Ripped of - Thieves are pretty stupid" and "Students, you have no business here" to "And especially you two sluts should stay out of here".

Now we are used to seeing lots of graffiti in places like that, but this kind of painting was new for us :)

After a few hours of shooting, all of the sudden some man/woman (we're still not sure) who looked pretty much like an escaped psychiatric patient came to us,started asking what we were doing (shooting, duh :) and whether we had permission (of course we didn't :). We were not impressed and when we started asking whether he himself had permission, that person threatened to call the owner. Much to my surprise, a few seconds later, a fancy cell phone appeared, and he started "calling". I say "calling", as I can't tell for sure, since that person was gone as fast as he had come. I seriously doubt he actually called anyone (other than some imaginary friend :)

An hour later, in another part of the factory (it is a pretty large place), we ran into him again. He seemed to be surprised we were still there, once again mumbled something about the owner, and quickly disappeared again. But he had been active in that time: a small stairway that we had used early in the day, was now amateurishly barricaded with a cupboard and some fire extinguishers. It probably wouldn't have been able to slow down a 2 year old infant for longer than a few minutes :).

Once we were outside of the factory, to take some shots of the exterior walls, he even followed us from a distance, trying not to be spotted. Going out, we had also spotted another painted wall, with lots of text. It seemed to be one long incoherent rambling, of which I only remember fragments like "too much to the far right is dangerous", "illegal activities take place here", "porn inside this building". all very interesting :)

But still, it makes you wonder what really went on in that mind of his: is he really thinking he's battling with thieves? Doe she suffer from delusional paranoia? There's really nothing (left) in that building that could be of any interest to thieves. It's also pretty sad that people still live like this in our said-to-be wealthy country. That person probably needs help.

A shot taken that day:

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