It's an exceptional warm friday in february. Bartje and i are cruisin' through France, somewhere north-east of Paris.
Some years ago i saw some amazing photos of an abandoned castle. There's even a round theater to be found somewhere inside. We decided to check out the place and see if it's still abandoned. An active hospital lies on the same property so we should be on our guard for people walking in the park and possibly around the castle itself. From a distance we can see the castle, it looks like the windows are new and we have some doubts about if it's doable. When Bart parks the car next to the place we can see the windows are fake. They're just wooden boards with windows painted on them.
Indeed there are people in the park and around the castle, we should be carefull. A car is parked at the front of the castle, four guys are sitting inside. We suspect them to be explorers waiting for the right moment to enter the castle.
We took some exteriors shots of the place and spot an open door down at cellar, out of sight from people walking by. The door ends up to be a dead end. All the basement windows have bars in front of them, but there's one with one bar missing. We're in!!
It's completely dark inside and we can hear people talking outside. All excited and as quite as we possibly can be we start looking for a way up.
It takes us a couple of minutes to find a staircase leading up. Halfway on the staircase Bart stops and says, is that an alarm? The moment he points his torch towards it the alarms goes off with an immense loud siren. We did not expected this at all and the very loud sound keeps on going and almost gave us a moment of panic. We run back down the stairs and through the pitch black basement to get out asap.
We're outside, but our car is parked right next to the castle. Outside of the castle the alarm is even louder and we realize that we have a foreign license plate.
If security of whomever is going to turn up, we're suspects straight away. And try to explain without speaking the language why we got maps, torches, camera's and a rope ladder in the car.
We jump in the car and speed off the property as fast we can. Five minutes later we wonder if those guys in the car at the front are busted now because of us.
We laugh, have smoke and are glad we didn't got busted. Too bad about the castle though....
Some years ago i saw some amazing photos of an abandoned castle. There's even a round theater to be found somewhere inside. We decided to check out the place and see if it's still abandoned. An active hospital lies on the same property so we should be on our guard for people walking in the park and possibly around the castle itself. From a distance we can see the castle, it looks like the windows are new and we have some doubts about if it's doable. When Bart parks the car next to the place we can see the windows are fake. They're just wooden boards with windows painted on them.
Indeed there are people in the park and around the castle, we should be carefull. A car is parked at the front of the castle, four guys are sitting inside. We suspect them to be explorers waiting for the right moment to enter the castle.
We took some exteriors shots of the place and spot an open door down at cellar, out of sight from people walking by. The door ends up to be a dead end. All the basement windows have bars in front of them, but there's one with one bar missing. We're in!!
It's completely dark inside and we can hear people talking outside. All excited and as quite as we possibly can be we start looking for a way up.
It takes us a couple of minutes to find a staircase leading up. Halfway on the staircase Bart stops and says, is that an alarm? The moment he points his torch towards it the alarms goes off with an immense loud siren. We did not expected this at all and the very loud sound keeps on going and almost gave us a moment of panic. We run back down the stairs and through the pitch black basement to get out asap.
We're outside, but our car is parked right next to the castle. Outside of the castle the alarm is even louder and we realize that we have a foreign license plate.
If security of whomever is going to turn up, we're suspects straight away. And try to explain without speaking the language why we got maps, torches, camera's and a rope ladder in the car.
We jump in the car and speed off the property as fast we can. Five minutes later we wonder if those guys in the car at the front are busted now because of us.
We laugh, have smoke and are glad we didn't got busted. Too bad about the castle though....
