Urbex - Llanberis Bunker/RAF Cache - June 2017

Описание: Just outside Llanberis in North Wales is a disused slate quarry which was converted into a huge two-storey underground bunker during WWII. The Air Ministry used it as a munitions cache during the early 1940s, storing large quantities of incendiary bombs there.

In January 1942 more than half of the giant structure collapsed, burying roughly 14,000 tons of bombs, around 14% of the RAF's entire stockpile. Over the decades that followed, the collapsed section was cleared, leaving a large rectangular hole which is clearly visible on Google Maps. Over the decades that followed, the site was used to dump explosives, train cadets at the RAF School of Explosives, and was finally cleared of all dumped munitions between 1969 and 1975.

I had a couple of hours spare, so I grabbed by GoPro and torch and dropped in to have a look. I'd been here before in 2010 and parts of the site had been more accessible back then. For example, the yellow door towards the back of the inner structure (with telltale running water sounds coming from inside) leads to a rocky tunnel which opens out into a 70ft-deep fissure, part of the old quarry. The bulkhead was added since last time I was here. Attempts have been made to cut a hole in the bulkhead wide enough to squeeze through, but so far nobody managed it. I did have a scout around to see if I could find the chasm from the surface, but I never found a safe way round there. If there turns out to be one, I might go back with some climbing gear and check it out. Leave a comment if you came across it.

The interior of the bunker is much bigger than I made it look in this video. I didn't have much time, so I just gave a brief overview. The rest of the structure is pretty empty, but worth a look, especially as various graffiti artists have added deliberately creepy and unsettling images to the walls which are pretty scary on your own, by torchlight. One tag, which I glimpsed for a second, reads "Beware of faces in the dark".

Another great thing about this bunker is the acoustics inside. The whole site is about the size of two football fields, and the harsh concrete walls make for an immensely long reverb. I tried to demonstrate it by clapping and whistling in the video, but I didn't do it justice. The long halls and parallel walls also throw echoes of your own movements back at you which are so long it genuinely sounds like somebody else is there in the darkness with you, somewhere in the distance.

I use different entry and exit routes in this video. The route I took out is easier and less conspicuous because it's not within sight of a main road. The road I reach when I end the video is not publicly open to vehicles, in case anybody thought I was casually kneeling in the middle of a public road, drinking water.

Camera: GoPro Hero4 Black Edition - 1080p, 30fps, ProTune.
Mic: Sennheiser lavalier mic (which managed to pick up an awful lot of panting from me)

Info about the history of the site came from here:
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/si...