Car Graveyard

 (Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. Under UK law, trespass without force is a civil offence. I never break into a place, I never photograph a place that is currently occupied, as this would be morally wrong and intrusive, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose location.  I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building. 

This location was a happy accident. Jess and I were wandering through some woods, looking for something completely different. After a pretty intense trek, we found that there was nothing of it for us to see anymore. It was not a wasted journey though, because our route took us to a heap of abandoned vehicles just rotting away in the woods. Sometimes the best adventures are the ones that you're not expecting.

 

Someday, it will be impossible to spot these vehicle carcasses, as nature is quickly taking them back.

I'm not really a car person, so I wasn't as excited by the discovery as Jess was. Now, if there was a tank graveyard in the woods, I'd be a total tripod. I have at least four on my to-do list, but unfortunately none of them are local. I'm sure I'll have a blog about them someday though. 

 

Cars aren't as interesting to me. I see them every day. In fact I nearly died in one recently. That's an adventure I can't wait to tell you about in aproximately ten blogs time. That's perhaps the most interesting thing that's ever happened to me in a car. I've never even gone dogging, which disappoints me because I'm very much a try-anything-once kinda guy. Except incest, sorry Nan.

 

Nevertheless, this discovery is pretty fascinating. Someone once collected all these vehicles together and then seemingly forgot about them. There's a story here, and I don't know what it is. Obviously, this place is also a thieves wet dream, so I'm going to disappoint everyone by not disclosing the location, of course.

The metal frame in the foreground is one of those mechanics contraptions for getting under the vehicle. Behind that appears to be a caravan completely covered over in nature.

There was no getting into it, and I was a little thankful, but also intrigued. On one hand, few things smell as bad as mouldy caravan. On the other hand... imagine if the interior was perfectly preserved.

 

On the other other hand, what if there was a body in there? I'm getting a little carried away, but doesn't this just play with the imagination?   

 

There's a mower in the bushes too.

There's a scooter here, with L-plates.

There's the remains of a tractor here too.

Here's a van.

I did try the vans sliding side door, but it was locked.

Eventually we came across this large shack, and while someone had strung up some plastic sheeting to keep out the elements, it had since fallen down. However, the stuff inside has still been preserved a lot better than the stuff outside.

Firstly, there's this really cool-looking blue thing.

Jess pointed out how undisturbed the layer of dust was on this car. Nobody has written their names, or social media handles. There's not even any swastikas or penis. It seems we've found something completely off the radar of the average abandoned tourists. I'm not arrogant enough to assume we were the first, but whoever did precede us has clearly been respectful. If I was to share this location with even one person, the worst case scenario is this car would be stripped down and stolen, and the best case scenario is someone would draw a cock on it. It wouldn't even need to be the person I gave the location to, either. It's not just about trusting people to not be and/or draw dicks, but trusting them to not trust other people too.

The wing mirrors are on the bonnet rather than next to the windows. I think that would take some getting used to.

Next to the car is this bike thing that looks pretty retro, but next to that is some kind of wheeled contraption under a blanket.

It's hard to tell for sure with the blanket over it, but it looks like a hang glider.

Fixed to the ceiling of the shack we noticed another glider. This is so awesome! I've never come across an abandoned hang glider before!

Also next to the blue car was this land rover.

This was once part of the auxiliary fire service, so from a historic standpoint, this is one hell of a historic find. Auxiliary fire services date back to the 1930s, basically helping out the small local brigades. As the quality of the emergency services improved, both the auxiliary fire services and the local brigades were replaced by the national fire service in 1941, although the auxiliary fire service saw a revival in 1948, and gained upgraded equipment in the 1950s due to the ever-increasing threat of nuclear attacks during the Cold War. I'm guessing that this land rover is from that period, rather than the pre-1941 era, but even so it's a relic!

This thing also got my attention.

 

There's some sign of activity here. Someone has wiggled the windscreen wiper...

These aren't the original seats. This thing has been modified.

Similarly, that's not the original gear stick. In fact, this is what really got my attention. That's a second world war German hand grenade.

Ever since I went urbexing in Germany, I've been learning German on Duolingo. However, Duolingo doesn't teach me about German explosive devices so I had to look up the meaning of "Vor gebrauch sprengkapsel einsetzen."

It means "Before use, insert detonator."

I'm contemplating the authenticity of this grenade though. The symbol at the top isn't quite central. I also assume there would have been a swastika in the middle of the ring. However, whoever decided that a German grenade would make a good gear stick probably didn't want to drive around with a swastika on display and likely had it removed. If that's the case then it's possible that the entire symbol had to be re-applied, and that's how it got off-centre.

But it could just be a replica. Either way, it's pretty cool. But who puts this much effort into modifying a vehicle and making it awesome just to leave it in a shack in the woods?

There's also this pretty cool tractor.

Lastly buried under some junk, we have this yellow Pontiac that has seen better days.

The car is unlocked, revealing quite a nice interior, if one can look past the mould that's growing on the steering wheel. Also, the steering wheel is on the left, so this car's not from the UK. 

That might be a stupid thing to say about a Pontiac, but as I said, I'm not a car person. I only know it's a Pontiac because that's what it says on the back. A quick Google revealed that Pontiacs stopped being produced in 2009 so this thing is at least a decade old. And yet, the manual is still on the passenger seat. Perhaps with a little TLC and a new steering wheel it could be put back on the road.

I didn't stop for long because that mould had quite an offensive odour.

There's also this little rusty bike.

That's it for the vehicles but in the shack there was also a variety of other junk, including this TV.

The junk is strewn out in the woods too.

It mostly just seems like fly tipping, possibly by whoever left all of the vehicles here.

That's all I've got for this awesome little location. Although I love reading and writing about history, and this didn't have a lot to talk about in that regard, I still enjoyed this place. Sometimes a place doesn't need a detailed narative. The mystery of the location speaks for itself. Why are these just left here? What's up with that grenade gear stick mod? How could anyone abandon a hang glider?

... is the owner dead inside that caravan?

Next time I'm returning to one of my favourite Shropshire locations to uncover even more secrets, and then we're off to a pub on the international blog... the blog that's not as international as it could have been thanks to this damn virus. But that's a rant for another day. In the meantime, follow my Instagram, follow my Twitter, Follow me on Reddit, and like my page on Facebook. Given that social media is an algorithmic hellscape that only shows peoples content to a small number of the people who actually follow them, liking and sharing my stuff is a great way to help combat their evil ways too.

Thanks for reading!