Tag: Underground

Looking for the Cave Clan in Melbourne’s ANZAC Drain

When I visited Australia it was pure drain tourism. I was heading down under to check out the ANZAC Drain, and other Cave Clan hangouts. The city of Melbourne might be best known for its parks and beaches, colourful street art and glittering modern architecture… but for me, nothing could have been more exciting than the chance to explore Melbourne’s famous labyrinth of drains.

Like many of the big Australian cities, Melbourne is built on top of an intricate system of storm drains designed to redirect or contain the flow of natural streams. The result is a breathtaking series of tunnels and corridors, stairwells, waterfalls and vast subterranean chambers.

I was intent on discovering this hidden world for myself, and I decided to start by looking for the ANZAC Drain: a spacious storm drain in the city centre, which serves as a kind of clubhouse for the local Cave Clan.

The Cave Clan

Founded in 1986 by a trio of Melbourne teenagers, the Cave Clan has since grown to become the world’s largest organisation of urban explorers.

To date the Cave Clan have charted storm drains right across Australia, in addition to natural caves, mines, old fortresses and a wealth of abandoned buildings. While members of the Clan come from all walks of life, the organisation is famously secretive.

I first tried to contact the Cave Clan several months ago, through their official website, but had no response. Next I attempted to sign up for an account on the Cave Clan forum, but my request failed.

It wasn’t until I left Australia that I would hear back from them – but for now at least, it looked like I would be going in solo.

Luckily for me, the ANZAC Drain wasn’t difficult to find; and so, a couple of days after arriving in Australia I donned my headlamp, strapped on a pair of disposable trainers, and waded into the musty darkness of the drain.

ANZAC Drain

It’s a local tradition that whoever discovers a ‘new’ drain has the right to name it. The ANZAC Drain was so named because it was discovered by the Clan on ANZAC Day; the 25th April celebration which recognises the wartime efforts of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

This particular drain was constructed in 1910. It had once been a natural stream, but as the surrounding area became increasingly urbanised this flood-prone tributary proved to be problematic. So, as Melbourne developed the water was forced underground; to be built over and in time forgotten by the majority of the city’s inhabitants.

Stepping inside the drain at its outflow, the red brick tunnel disappears back beneath the river bank. After the first 200m or so, reinforced concrete appears as the drain passes beneath a main road; here the tunnel rumbles from the sound of heavy traffic above. When the concrete isn’t ringing with the echoes of engines, the still of the underground is punctuated by the regular chirping of crickets and constant dripping water. The walls are thick with spiderwebs, while cockroaches scuttle underfoot.

The names of clan members graffitied onto the passage walls give this place a sense of deep significance, and sets the tone as one approaches the hallowed meeting place. There were a few names I recognised… but many more that I didn’t.

A little further along, a painted sign reads: “TO THE CHAMBER. 38 METRES. CC.”

The Chamber

I had spotted the Chamber up ahead long before I knew what I was looking at. Natural light filters in from above, reflecting off the stream which follows a recessed path along the central gully. On either side of the brook, large, elevated platforms provide spacious seating areas.

The walls were covered with images – ranging from personal tags and signatures (including those left by visitors from other chapters of the Cave Clan), through to full scale murals. The standard of artistry ranged as broadly as the subject material – with a few of the pieces standing out from the rest as works of not inconsiderable artistic merit.

Painted above the lintel at the Chamber’s yawning entrance, a sign read: “CAVE CLAN WELCOMES YOU TO THE CHAMBER”.

The Chamber here in the ANZAC Drain serves as the venue for the Cave Clan’s annual awards ceremony: ‘The Clannies’. Held sometime each autumn at the end of the draining season (that’s spring, to anyone north of the equator), the Clannies celebrate the best and the worst of each year’s underground adventures.

There are awards presented for the “Best First Year Explorer”, “Best Drain”, and the dubiously titled, “Goes Furthest Up Drains”. The final award of the night is the “Gold Clannie” – a gold-painted bowling pin, awarded to the Clan member deemed to have put in the best performance of the year.

A large wall painting commemorated the unofficial sponsors of the event: Commonwealth Bank, Centrelink, Victoria Police, Melbourne Water and Victoria Bitter. On another wall, a painted grid provided a floor-to-ceiling guestbook for visitors to sign.

A bag in one corner was filled with unused tealight candles. Dripping wax stains on shelves and lintels around the chamber gave an idea how they might look, in use. Later, I’d even hear stories of projectors being dragged down to this drain, to screen films up on the walls inside.

From time to time the eerie silence was broken by the sound of footsteps from above. The Chamber’s only source of natural light filters through a set of outdoor steps, located somewhere in a public thoroughfare; occasionally a pedestrian would pass up or down the stairs, entirely oblivious to the yawning cavern directly beneath their feet.

Beneath the steps, the ANZAC Drain continued towards the source of the stream. A shallow passage disappeared beneath the lights, where the central gully spilled out from an enclosed tunnel. I walked a little way in to take a look.

Stooping beneath the low concrete ceiling, the stale-smelling water was soon washing up around my knees. The passage split into two narrow pipes, their ends disappearing in darkness.

Judging by the thick cobwebs and relative lack of graffiti, it was clear that Clan members rarely travelled further along the ANZAC Drain than this main chamber. These roach infested tunnels could only get smaller from here, so I decided against venturing any further.

As I finally made to leave the Chamber, I spotted a memorial high on one wall. Dedicated to the Big Drain Posse, were a series of painted tombstones naming deceased members of the Clan. While many of the names were strangers to me, there were a few that caught my eye… such as founder of the Sydney Clan, Michael “Predator” Carlton (1971-2004) and Canadian urban exploration guru, Jeff “Ninjalicious” Chapman (1973-2005).

The ANZAC Drain might host all the best Cave Clan parties, but it is only one very small fraction of their domain. Beneath Melbourne alone, there are more than 150 storm drains – and many of them are considerably harder to access than the Chamber. Just take a look at the Maze Drain, and see for yourself.

23 February 2013
To Beijing Below: Chairman Mao’s Forbidden Undercity

Official figures suggest that as many as 8 million visitors flock to Beijing’s Forbidden City each year. The majority of these visitors are unaware of another city right beneath their feet, however; and unlike the thriving tourist hotspot above, this one is truly forbidden. The vast, disused complex known as the Beijing Underground City was designed to accommodate 6 million people in case of nuclear attack, and public entry is strictly prohibited.

How could I resist?

Beijing Underground City

The Beijing Underground City, or “Dixia Cheng”, dates back to a plan first laid in 1969. During the time of the Sino-Soviet conflict, Chairman Mao was looking for ways to defend China against a potential Soviet attack. One of the solutions was a complex of bomb shelters. Dug 10 metres beneath the ground, the shelters featured a series of concrete doors, water-proof hatches and ventilation systems, able to protect against everything from floods to radioactive fallout.

Work began in earnest in the early 1970s. The tunnels were dug out mostly by hand, and as many as 300,000 of the city’s inhabitants were involved in the project.

Covering a total area in excess of 85 square km, the complex had space and facilities for 40% of Beijing’s population. In the event of an attack, the remaining 60% would be able to flee through tunnels leading into the Western Hills [1]. By the time of its completion the Chinese government intended to be able to provide permanent subterranean shelter for all 6 million inhabitants of Beijing.

The photo on the right comes from China.org, where it featured in an article dated April 2005. Located on the quiet outskirts of the Qianmen district, this shop front led to a portion of the tunnels approved for tourists. Opened in the year 2000, tour groups would be taken down into the subterranean passages and shown examples of soldiers’ quarters, store rooms, infirmaries and meeting halls.

Unfortunately though, this visible portion of the Undercity was closed in February 2008 for renovation… and hasn’t yet been reopened.

I was exploring Beijing with a friend, and we decided to try and find our way down to the Underground City; neither of us had been in the country long at this point, and it sounded like a perfect introduction to urban exploration in China. The former public entrance seemed a good place to start, and so we headed to the address along West Damochang Street, Qianmen.

The long street led us further and further from the bustling metro station at Qianmen, following a rough map I had drawn up from my research. It was soon clear that we were beyond the usual tourist zones; old men playing mah jong in the street would look up as we passed, eyeing us with suspicion. Almost half an hour down this narrow alley, we finally found the address.

Other than the number ’62’ scrawled on a nearby wall, there was little to tell us what the building had once been. The heavy wooden doors facing onto the street were locked shut, and so we sauntered around to the courtyard at the side of the property, to see if we could find an alternative point of entry.

Here an old man sat in a broken plastic chair propped against the wall, smoking a clay pipe as he watched us with interest. We were peeking through a barred window at a staircase descending into darkness, when the man spoke.

“Close,” he said.

I had been preparing for this moment… and so I whipped out my phrasebook, and asked him, “当打开?”

While Chinese pictograms are actually much easier to learn and recognise than one might imagine, their pronunciation is not always kind on Western tongues. I fumbled the noises out, and the old man looked at me blankly.

“Close,” he said again, this time accompanying the word with a gesture of arms crossed vigorously in front of his chest. As if to further illustrate the point, he waved towards a pile of rubbish in the corner of the courtyard. There behind black bags of household waste, the old museum sign was leant up against the wall.

“Close,” he repeated, a note of triumph creeping into his voice. We tried offering him money for a look inside, showing him a wad of cash equal to a week’s salary by basic Chinese standards. The man only chuckled in dismissal, and repeated his one English word.

Qianmen Markets

There are believed to be perhaps 90 entrances to the Dixia Cheng Undercity still in existence, although many have been put to other uses since. In Wangfujing an air raid shelter now serves as a youth hostel; the tunnels at Chongwen and Xuanwu have been converted to deep, cavernous theatres. Some of the other entrances lie hidden beneath factories and warehouses, markets, restaurants and schools.

The next address on my list was at Dazhalan Jie, Qianmen. This busy commercial district not far south of Tiananmen Square was a chaotic mess of shoppers and tourists, rickshaws and con artists.

Picking our way through noisy markets, and turning down offers of art shows and traditional tea ceremonies, we made our way to the address. It took us to an indoor supermarket, a cavernous hanger filled with stalls of books, clothes and perfume.

Walking the circumference of the market stalls, it didn’t seem as though we had found the right place – until we spotted a flight of unlit steps in a corner near the entrance, leading down to a lower level. We discretely made our way towards the basement stairs, browsing through stalls until we were close enough to make out a sign which read: “Air defence basement”.

Waiting for a crowd of shoppers to pass between us and the kiosk, we made a dash for it.

The stairs took us down into something between an office and an antique shop. Two Chinese women were sat working at desks amidst cabinets full of aged documents – many of which had price tags attached. We tried (and failed) to blend in and look natural.

We explored both basement rooms before settling on a large, metal-plated door set into a wall and heavily chained. Both clerks had been watching us attentively all this time, so we asked them about it.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what they said to us, but the general meaning was clear enough. Reaching for a wallet made the women angry and uncomfortable, and so we apologised and left.

The Carpet Factory

The first two addresses had got us nowhere, but I still had one more to try. We would need to leave the Qianmen district this time, heading towards nearby Chongwen. I had read reports about a carpet factory on Xingfu Dajie, which often used to feature as the final stop on a tour of the Undercity.

We hailed a rickshaw near Qianmen Metro, and gave the driver the address. He agreed a price of 20 Yuan upfront – it was steep by Chinese standards, but at just £1 each for the two of us we didn’t mind. At some point during the journey the price doubled however, and when we arrived on the street the driver told us the figure had been a quote per person.

We knew we were being conned, but as the argument had attracted the attention of a handful of other rickshaws parked nearby, we decided to cut our losses and leave.

The address seemed to take us to a theatre this time. The show was about to start, and so we milled in with the crowd wandering towards the foyer.

On either side of the entrance, steep flights of stairs led down to a lower level – but these were sealed behind chained glass doors.

Instead we made our way around the outside of the theatre, squeezing past a crowd of men in tight lycra and makeup who stood smoking cigarettes outside the stage door.

Our search proved fruitless, but as we were leaving we spotted the factory sign outside a neighbouring plot. The site had been bulldozed.

Nothing remained of the factory, other than the tiles and wallpaper which still clung to the outer walls.

Searching the rubble for some kind of tunnel entrance I found a broken wooden door covering a manhole, weighed down with rocks and stones; on inspection though, the only thing it hid was a shallow sewer.

Mission Failed

Our attempts to enter the Beijing Underground City ended in failure, but you can see a selection of photos from inside Dixia Cheng here.

I learned later that the citizens of Beijing are strictly forbidden from inviting outsiders into the tunnels; although documentary footage available on the Internet shows some portions of the complex being used to store factory goods, or rear chickens.

In other spots the dark, humid conditions – and a constant temperature of 27 degrees Celsius – create the perfect environment for the cultivation of mushrooms.

Entrances to the Underground City were placed close to residential areas, schools and workplaces, and even now the shelters are regularly checked and maintained by city officials.

Unless you have a local contact willing to take a risk for you however, it seems the only way you’re going to get in is by breaking into random houses to inspect the cellar; fist-fighting unarmed women in a department store basement; or by offering a large incentive to someone very important.

[1] Some reports say the tunnels go further, even as far as the port at Tianjin.

13 January 2013
The Fortifications of Bucharest: Leordeni Fort № 10

In preparation for my trip to Bucharest, I spent a bit of time surfing the web – trying to get a feel for the city’s atmosphere, architecture and abandonments. I came across Locuri Uitate. The site is run by Peppy, whose extensive experience of urban exploration in Romania has allowed him to sample and report on an impressive cross section of the city’s secret places.

I got in touch, and Peppy was delighted to meet up and give me a tour of his city; starting with one of his own favourites sites, the abandoned subterranean stronghold known as the Leordeni Fortress.

The Fortifications of Bucharest

The Leordeni Fort No. 10 (or ‘Leurdeni 10 Fort’) was a part of the much larger Fortifications of Bucharest.

In the late nineteenth century, Romania’s King Carol began drafting plans for the defence of Bucharest [1]. Neighbouring Bulgaria had only just declared its independence from Ottoman rule in 1878, with the help of Russian and Romanian troops marching south after Romania’s own War of Independence.

Meanwhile, to the northwest the Austro-Hungarian Empire continued to cast an imposing shadow across Romanian soil.

The Fortifications of Bucharest were designed by a celebrated Belgian military architect named Henri Alexis Brialmont; construction began in 1884 on a ring of 18 forts, spaced roughly 4km apart. At a distance of around 12km from the residential areas of the city, this defensive wall sufficed to keep contemporary field artillery out of firing range.

The 18 forts were divided by the Dambovita River [2]. The project took more than twenty years to complete, and cost a total of 111.5 million Gold Lei – a sum three times greater than the army’s annual budget.

The rewards were not to be enjoyed for long, however. The twentieth century saw radical new advances in military engineering; the threat of aerial bombardment, improved long range artillery and new, devastating explosives soon rendered these classical fortifications obsolete.

The 1914 Battle of Liège was a warning sign for the Romanians, as another of Brialmont’s forts fell swiftly beneath German boots. By the time Bucharest was taken in 1916, the fortifications had already been stripped and abandoned.

Almost all of the forts fell into disrepair after this point. The Chiajna 18 Fort was reportedly in use as a food market during the Communist era, while the stronghold at Jilava served as a place of detention and execution for political prisoners under Ceaușescu‘s party. Even today, Jilava remains a notorious penitentiary.

Meanwhile, the other strongholds declined gradually into worse and worse shape; stripped of artillery and stores, their once fortified battements slowly giving way to the inevitable onset of nature. Such was the state of the site I visited, the tenth, or Leordeni Fortress.

Leordeni Fort № 10

Meeting beside Bucharest’s picturesque Cişmigiu Gardens, Peppy and myself travelled first by metro, and then by minibus to reach our destination – a village to the southeast of the city centre. From there we followed the train tracks.

During their heyday all 18 forts had been connected by both road and rail, and the route forms the basis of the new Bucharest ring road. We walked along these dilapidated lines dodging stray dogs, past gypsies on horse-drawn carts, to reach the broken remains of a military barrack.

There were a cluster of figures stood talking in a neighbouring factory yard, so we dashed quickly for cover inside the compound. Picking our way past the skeletal structures we soon reached the entrance to the stronghold.

Several cars parked at the otherwise abandoned location made us uncomfortable at first, and it turned out we were not the only visitors to the Leordeni Fort this afternoon; a group of young Romanians had picked the site for an airsoft battle, and so Peppy and myself spent much of the afternoon dodging plastic pellets as the combatants stalked each other through the tunnels around us.

The walls of Leordeni are as much as two metres thick in places.

Some of these forts are still occupied by the military, in particular those southwest of Bucharest. They’re used nowadays as ammo stores or firing ranges, and it’s easy to see why; the majority of Leordeni, by way of an example, is buried beneath the earth and accesible only through a handful of stone doors around its circumference. Between the fortresses were arranged a series of subterranean batteries, many now all but forgotten.

After stepping into the entrance chamber we made our way along a series of arcades, large stone windows pouring thick beams of dusty light.

The passages fanned out from here into a grid, path after path leading further into the dark, subterranean regions of the fort.

Some of these passages culminated in dead ends, others opened onto large chambers and vaults. Two separate corridors fed into the same circular area, a crumbling brickwork chimney open to the sky above.

Another turning had been long since bricked up, a makeshift barrier which itself had begun to collapse over time. Climbing through the broken brickwork, we carefully made our way down the steps to Leordeni’s lower levels.

There was no light in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Leordeni. The broad stone chambers here would have served as barracks or ammo dumps, secured deep beneath the earth. None of the airsofters had ventured this far from the bright open corridors near the entrance, and the stale air was heavy and still.

At the far end we reached another flight of stairs, this set leading up and into a new area of the fort. We stepped out of the stairwell, and into a long, straight corridor; here a row of portholes shot bright white circles onto the opposing walls, a series of spotlights arranged with the rank and file of a military parade.

This semi-lit corridor took us to a defensive position. Past the brick entrance a rough, low-ceilinged passage led upwards, and into a circular chamber mounted with an iron-plated turret. Here at least the air moved, and the walls were thick with the fur of age-old cobwebs. Even on the passage walls life had taken root, erupting in a thick hide of mould that shone powderblue in the pale autumn sun.

After the turret chamber we entered a stone cavern with a gun position mounted in its outer wall; no more than a metal-lined slot in the brickwork, set in with a rusted iron gun mount.

We headed back by a different route, exploring some of the stores and housings above ground level. In places the floor had fallen away, creating a series of platforms balanced on the wooden beams beneath doorways. Navigating the area made for an enjoyable challenge, and with its numerous obstacles and multiple levels I could imagine this site making a great destination for parkour enthusiasts…

Following the fort’s circumference we came within range of the airsoft battle. Peppy caught a bullet from a sniper outside, and for a moment I was able to imagine this fortress as it was in life.

Near the main entrance, we found a map of the stronghold chalked onto a brick wall. We were able to trace the clockwise route that had led us from the city-side entrance to the lower levels, and then through the defensive positions pointed south towards the Ottomans.

We left the Leordeni Fort by the same way we arrived – back along the train tracks to wait for a bus in the nearby village.

It had been an afternoon well spent, and this historic site felt all the more significant for the high standard of preservation within; while the stronghold may have been stripped of its teeth, it nevertheless remains untouched by litter and graffiti.

One down, seventeen to go.

[1] For a more thorough look at the history of the Fortifications of Bucharest, I would recommend reading the fascinating report on Bulgarian Artillery.

[2] The forts of Chitila, Mogosoaia, Otopeni, Tunari, Stefanesti, Afumati, Pantelimon, Cernica and Catelu lay on the left bank; arranged on the right were Leordeni, Popesti, Berceni, Jilava, Broscarie, Magurele, Bragadiru, Domnesti and Chiajna.

12 January 2013
German Military Tunnels Beneath the Misty Mountains of China

Qingdao is a modern port city, situated roughly 550km south of Beijing on China’s east coast. The city is best known for its Yellow Sea port and Olympic sailing village; for its thriving business and commercial sector; and no less for the beauty of Qingdao’s largest landmarks: the mountains Fushan and Laoshan. Qingdao also has something of a reputation for fine breweries, a local tradition started by the German colonists who settled here in 1898. They renamed the city ‘Tsingtao’ and built a picturesque Bavarian Quarter, lined with catholic churches and colonial mansions.

The Germans left more than just churches and breweries in their wake, however. In an effort to defend this important strategic outpost against the British fleet stationed in the Pacific, the colonists turned their attention to Mount Fushan: transforming the mountain into a vast, hidden weapon.

Over the Misty Mountains

I had no idea what sort of opportunities for urban exploration China might provide, and so I went with an open mind. As it turns out, and particularly along the populous east coast, I was surprised to find somewhat limited possibilities on offer; largely due to China’s rapid rate of development.

Buildings don’t stay empty for long in Chinese cities, as there are always more families looking to move in… and wealthy developers with the means to make it happen.

There are construction sites aplenty but most of these are inhabited by teams of labourers, often shipped in from rural areas. During the few hours when work ceases, it’s common for workers to live in crude on-site camps – rendering most construction sites near impossible to infiltrate.

It’s not until you head away from the population centres that you begin to find the hidden treasures of China.

While visiting Qingdao, I started hearing rumours about forgotten German bunkers. Most of these reports were vague and inconclusive – a mysterious spy hole in a cliff face, a friend of a friend who had stumbled across a hidden tunnel entrance – but given the city’s history and significance, the stories made sense.

And so it was that two of us set out from the city, hiking up the rocky slopes of Mount Fushan. The tunnel entrance we had heard about would take a few hours to reach, situated on the other side of the main peak.

Just as we began our ascent towards the aptly-named ‘Dragonback Ridge’ however, we were hit by a torrential storm; hard, driving rain and dangerous crosswinds, accompanied by a heavy fog.

Making our way slowly in the treacherous conditions, we were just edging around a rocky outcrop when an old WWII-style pillbox appeared out of the mist above us.

We were still a long way from our target, but the apparition clearly deserved further investigation.

I scrambled up the clammy rockface, to find the turret completely sealed. It seemed to melt out of the cliff, offering only a narrow loophole – and no way inside. However, by angling a torch beam through the hole it was possible to make out a concrete shaft behind; disappearing into darkness, and the heart of the mountain.

We had found the proof of the story… all that remained was to find a way to get inside the long forgotten mountain fort.

Dragonback Ridge

It took a fair bit of searching to find an entrance. We clambered up and down narrow, slippery mountain paths, in fog so thick that it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead. Some of the rocks showed signs of blasting – shallow, unnatural indentations hollowed into the flesh of the mountain. Finally looping back around the other side of the small peak, we stumbled across a stone archway set into the inland side of the mountain.

Torches switched to full-beam we stepped out of the storm, and into a still darkness.

The tunnel beyond was mostly formed from natural rock – the bulging contours of the passage illustrating where one crater at a time had been blasted into the solid rock, joining to form a corridor. Inside, nothing stirred… other than the slow, methodical dripping of condensation from the walls. Even the raging storm outside became inaudible, as we carefully made our way deeper inside the mountain.

Branching out from this main tunnel were a number of smaller caverns and chambers; some appeared to be no more than an accidental blast in the wrong direction, while others were reinforced with solid metal walls and bulkheads.

These chambers were often marked with Chinese characters scrawled clumsily across doorframes, and would have served as storerooms, ammo dumps, dormitories. At a humidity level not far off 100%, every surface was damp to touch – and the insides of these vaulted metal chambers sparkled like electric silver where the moisture ran down over mineral deposits.

We followed the main path as it wound upwards, curving around to the right, until after a while we were able to make out faint natural light ahead.

Here the rough, rocky walls were channelled into a vaulted stone passage. We stepped tentatively through one bulkhead door and then another, to find ourselves peering up a narrow concrete shaft. A series of decaying, red-rusted rungs led up to the turret we had previously seen peering out of the mountain.

At first I had wanted to get up there for a look – but as I took hold of the nearest rung it came away from the wall in my hand, leaving a rich red stain on my palm. Climbing was clearly out of the question, so instead we headed back to where another turning had forked off from the main path – a cavernous burrow which descended, step by stone step, into the impenetrable darkness.

Ninety even steps took us down to a lower passage, where even in the darkness we could feel the clammy mist pressing in on us. Much like the natural rock passage above this basement level was lined with empty storerooms, iron doors sitting heavily on rusted hinges.

The sheer number of bolts, shutters and bars that adorned each doorway made it clear just how secure the site must have been in its heyday. The corridor terminated with a solid stone door, followed by a second and third; an impenetrable barrier, had they been sealed closed.

After the third bulkhead door we scrambled under a low stone lintel, to find ourselves back out on the mountainside.

Dazed and blinking, we took our bearings… one secret underground base down, and we hadn’t even reached our destination yet.

Fushan Watchtowers

From here it was a long trek along the top of the ridge to our next stop. We passed by a television mast guarded by a handful of wild dogs, and then down into a grassy saddle overlooking the city. By this time the storm had abated, and so we stopped for a rest beside an old look-out point – no more than a concrete hut, its interior fittings burnt, broken and scattered with litter.

The path levelled out as we followed it down the inland side of the mountain, to another tunnel entrance set high above the city skyline. The concrete archway stood partially concealed behind a crude stone shelter; a semi-circular wall set in with a viewport for sentry guns.

Passing inside, the passage rose immediately into a steep stairwell. As we climbed higher and higher inside the rocky headland we passed by a similar series of caverns and grottos hollowed out on either side. Here though, the construction was simpler – rough rock walls, and the occasional well supplying fresh spring water from deep under the mountain.

Higher up the stairs divided into three corridors, each one culminating in a lookout point. Two of these turrets faced out across the Yellow Sea, while the third offered inland views across Qingdao itself; each one was secured with a double airlock, a pair of heavy doors formed from reinforced concrete.

With these colossal blast doors closed the main network would have been securely protected against enemy missiles, mortars or grenades, which happened to find their way in through the narrow loophole of the turret.

One of these doors was partially closed as I approached, and it took all of my strength to shift the massive bulk even a few inches on its rusted hinges.

It was clear that this second tunnel network was designed purely for the purpose of defence. The three turrets between them covered a near 360-degree view of the mountain, and the caverns that sprouted from the main stair would have made convenient ammo dumps for the artillerymen above.

This installation only had one entrance, opening straight onto the mountain path. Carefully retracing our footsteps in the dark, we left the same way we came in… before stumbling across the entrance to a third tunnel network, which would prove to be the most impressive of them all.

The Hall of the Mountain King

When I spied another of the now-familiar concrete arches nearby, this time disappearing down into the ground at a 45 degree angle, it seemed at first to be a false alarm. The passage led down into an arched stone chamber beneath the earth, a square hole cut through the roof aiming a bright spotlight onto the strewn rubble beneath.

At the far side of this cave an identical corridor led back to the surface, emerging from dense green undergrowth a little further down the mountainside.

As we turned to leave however, my torchlight fell across the passage wall to reveal a small concrete hatch, hidden in the deep shadows. The heavy stone door that sealed the porthole was half covered by stones and debris, but we managed to shift enough of these aside to heave the door open, and squeeze into the small passage beyond.

The tunnel that faced us inside opened up into a corridor much like the first one we had explored; a floor of tightly packed sand and shingle, rough stone grottos blasted out on either side of the path, and the occasional iron doors leading to metal-lined vaults.

The mist here was thicker than in the other bunkers, playing havoc with my camera lens… but as we continued to explore, it soon became apparent that this section had served a more important role than either of the others.

The first sign of this was the sheer size of the network. While the other tunnels had been either a straight passage, or perhaps a couple of linked corridors, this one took a more intricate, labyrinthine form; a series of interlinking passages veering off in all directions.

Another feature that clearly distinguished this complex as a command centre, was the installation of electric lights: ceramic contacts poked out of the rock walls at regularly spaced intervals, supported on rusted iron terminals.

Here the storerooms and vaults were much larger, some of them offering enough space to have served as mess halls, dormitories or kitchens. Along the walls, a series of metal pipes and vents had been installed – presumably as conduits for water, gas, or even warm air during the winter months.

Another chamber, set right in the heart of the mountain, could have served as the ideal command centre. This large U-shaped room was connected to the main thoroughfare by several reinforced steel doors, and here there appeared a much higher frequency of electrical fittings.

This main network had none of the turrets or lookout points that the other two had featured – instead it was set right in the centre of the mountain ridge, positioned between the others, and spreading much deeper into the bowels of Mount Fushan.

We tested every turning we passed: some of which culminated in dead ends, others in storerooms or metal-lined vaults. A few passages veered out and away from the central complex, emerging on distant mountain slopes.

This third network featured a total of five exit points, and each one of them was protected with the same series of three sturdy, concrete doors – rendering this mountain base impenetrable from the outside.

Other features we discovered in the caverns hinted at just how well-developed this military installation had once been.

In addition to the electrical light fittings we found throughout (which were presumably installed in the later part of the 20th century, and powered by a now-absent generator), we stumbled across a series of deep wells filled with fresh mountain water, extensive metal ductwork, and a small blackened chamber set behind a hatch.

The latter, presumably, would have served as some kind of oven or boiler; at the top of the chamber a cluster of pipes and flues would have directed hot air out, before channelling it around the rest of the tunnels to provide a rudimentary central heating system.

Numerous alcoves and recesses showed traces of brick ovens, while deep in the darkness of the lowest cave, we even stumbled across a subterranean lake.

Fed by natural springs, the water would once have made the perfect bathing pool – but in the many years since the tunnels were in use, had become a breeding ground for frogs and toads.

We lingered for a while, an hour, two hours more perhaps, exploring deeper into the network of damp subterranean chambers, before emerging at last back into the mist and grey light of the mountainside.

The Fushan Tunnels

It is reasonable to assume that the Fushan Tunnels have continued to evolve over an extended period of time; from the first caverns blasted into the mountain around the turn of the 20th century, through to the later installation of electric lights.

The site was designed by the Germans, and would have given them the perfect vantage point for defending Tsingtao against naval assault.

However, in 1914 the German occupation of Qingdao ended with the dramatic Siege of Tsingtao. Rather than attempting to reclaim their Chinese outpost, these colonists were instead summoned home to aid the war effort in Europe.

The Japanese Imperial fleet took control of Qingdao after this point, and it is rumoured that they extended the Fushan tunnels significantly. The faded remains of Japanese characters can still be made out, scrawled across bulkheads and lookout posts throughout the complex… alongside Chinese and even Korean script.

For many years after the tunnels were allowed to fall into a state of disrepair, right up until WWII. At this point, as conflict with the Japanese was renewed afresh, the passages beneath Fushan Mountain served as artillery depots and (according to rumour) a special forces training facility. They were later used for similar purposes, during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.

While many of the details have become lost in the mists of history, it is clear that these deep, reinforced bunkers – with their numerous gun turrets, lookout posts and secret entrances – would have served to transform the picturesque Mount Fushan into the ultimate war machine… and provided an immense tactical advantage to whoever controlled the city and port below.

The vague report which had sent us scrambling up the mountainside in a typhoon, had mentioned one possible entrance to the bunkers; my online research suggested the existence of two.

In the end we managed to find three separate tunnel networks, with a total of eight entrances between them. (In the weeks that followed, I’d also go on to explore further networks of ruined tunnels beneath Zhongshan Park in the heart of the city; the former subterranean headquarters of the German colony.)

It is difficult to ascertain the true extent of the Fushan tunnels; how many more such networks there might be, or how deep they spread beneath the mountains. The only certainty is that this spectacular mountain range conceals far more than meets the eye.

22 December 2012
Exploring an Abandoned Cold War Bunker in Bulgaria

In Varna, Bulgaria, the Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship rises like a concrete bird from a hill beside the seashore. I had been inside the monument on a previous visit: I had seen the hollow interior, and the spaces that led beneath the Brutalist structure into a series of basement rooms. But it wasn’t until many months later, that a local friend showed me the way into an abandoned Cold War bunker hidden several levels beneath, in the hill itself.

The Cold War Bunker

The entrance to the bunker was hidden in plain sight – you just had to know where to look. Pushing through the bushes we found the old hatch, a metal door half rusted off its hinges. Red lettering on the hatch offered a safety warning, too faded now to be understood. We powered up our torches and headed in.

The bunker was bigger than I could have imagined. We soon found ourselves in a vast underground labyrinth, a series of interconnecting corridors and chambers. Broken pipes and sockets, the rusted parts of old boilers, suggested that once, this place had been fitted with water, gas and electricity.

I tried to figure out the purpose of different spaces as we passed, counting off mess halls and dormitories, a kitchen, shower room and several blocks of latrines.

The first cylindrical passage after the entrance was heavily graffitied, the words “Fear the Reaper” sprayed bold beside an inverted pentagram. Clearly not all visitors made it far from the entrance, however. These crude tags and slogans became rarer as we made our way deeper into the darkness.

In a boiler room near the entrance, twisted metal ducts lay strewn across the floor like fallen branches. A panel, screwed to one wall, featured the remains of an electrical switchboard.

An alcove tucked away at the rear of this chamber offered access to a narrow shaft beyond. Putting my torch to one side as I clambered over the chest-high lintel, I dropped down into a long passage with what appeared to be a drainage trench hollowed out in the floor. A rusted iron plate divided the space in two – I managed to squeeze under it, into a chimney-like structure. Above me a series of flaking, red-brown rungs disappeared into the darkness. I started climbing.

I didn’t get far, perhaps 15 feet, before a rung came away from the wall in my hand – crumbling as it did so into a coarse red powder. Common sense prevailed, and I decided to head back down.

Heading deeper into this leftover Cold War bunker, the tunnels formed a vast criss-crossed network. As we turned left and then right in the pitch dark, passing by unmarked tunnels on either side, it was easy to get the feeling that we were becoming gradually more lost. In reality though, I suspect we were simply wandering around a large interconnected grid: a closed circuit.

Metal pipes and ducts lay scattered throughout the tunnels. Looters had stripped out most of the furnishings, though little clues lay behind: switches, hatches and glass windows, or occasional lightbulbs hanging from lifeless sockets.

Most of the corridors were formed from concrete tubes, and footsteps had a habit of echoing down the length of the passages around us. Sometimes the echoes seemed to get lost, catching up with us later, or laying in ambush around the next turning. Then there were the hand prints.

Most of the graffiti appeared near the entrance, but other visitors had left their own unsettling marks on the site. In the boiler room, my torch beam fell suddenly across a cluster of pale hand prints pressed into the black soot on the wall; elsewhere, we discovered four long, trailing finger marks dragged across the edge of a broken doorway.

Nature too had managed to leave its signature. Droplets of moisture clung to ceilings and door lintels, translucent beads that caught the torchlight like a hundred tiny prisms. In another room, roots had managed to find their way down into the darkness of the bunker. Several clusters erupted from the flaking walls, fanning out into an intricate pattern of blind, groping tendrils.

This structure, a Cold War bunker easily large enough to house a hundred people for an extended period of time, seemed like it had never been used. Perhaps it had never been finished, even – but it was hard to tell, as the place was so heavily looted for metal, parts, or anything else of value.

It was dusk by the time we clambered back outside. The fresh air tasted sweet in my lungs, and after the dust and bad air of the tunnels I drank it in greedily.

We waited a moment, for a dog walker to pass by – and then we burst out of the bushes back onto the path that wound around the park. Above us, framed against the twilight, the monument atop the hill rose like a half-seen ghost in the night.

9 October 2012
The Descent: A Caving Disaster at St. Vincent’s Well, Bristol
A cursory browse through the growing catalogue of reports on this site may have had you under the illusion that this is a pastime without pitfalls.

It is for this reason that I have decided to incorporate a list of massive urban exploration failures – to serve as a reminder that things rarely go to plan, and that some of the more memorable adventures are those that end in disaster.

And so with that in mind, I have decided to kick off with one from the vaults… a catastrophe of epic proportions, that befell during an exploration of Bristol’s network of caves and forgotten rail tunnels back in 2009.

Here’s what a local paper had to say about the event:

First off, I’d like to address a few errors in the reporting:
- The caver’s rope did not snap
- The caver did not fall
- “The caver, thought to be in his 30s”, was actually accompanied by a dashing young explorer in his 20s; to whom fell the responsibility of climbing back out, getting to the main road, and fetching help.
Here’s what really happened.

A friend tipped me off to the existence of a tunnel network, located deep beneath the rocky bluff that supports the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Some parts consist of natural caves, while others were blasted out during the mid-nineteenth century. The celebrated civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel had a vision of building an underground railway system, for transporting freight between Bristol city and the nearby docks. This pioneering mechanic oversaw the creation of the first railway tunnels, and began the construction of brick-lined passages deep beneath the city. In 1859 however, the dream died with him – those left behind decided that the notion of underground trains would never catch on, and the existing tunnels were sealed up and forgotten.

Myself and the friend in question found our way in easily enough. He had been before, and was keen to explore a deeper cave system that led off from the main network. To this end, he had packed a ladder for the descent.

From the discreet entrance hidden just off a main road on the city’s outskirts, we had to squeeze through a narrow rocky fissure to reach the abandoned train tunnel beneath. This meant crawling on hands and knees through a shaft lined with thick webs, from which hung dozens of fat black spiders and their powdery-white egg sacks.

Once past this first ordeal though, we came into a long, vaulted chamber. Here the walls and ceiling were embellished by Victorian-style brickwork, while rusted iron pipework sprouted from walls and floor.

This was as far as my friend had been before, and he eagerly showed me to the next challenge… a vertical brickwork shaft at the far end of the tunnel, whose depths were well beyond the reach of our torches. He opened his bag, and brought out the ladder.

Now, I had been imagining one of those compact metal ladders you sometimes see in outdoor sports shops; solid construction and metal rungs, which roll up to fit inside a cylindrical canvas bag. Instead he pulled out a homemade rope ladder, which he had tied together the night before. He proceded to attach the top end to one of the metal pipes extending from the floor, dropped the other over the precipice, and gestured for me to give it a go.

“After you,” I said.

I still don’t know exactly how far the tunnels go – but I have heard rumours before and since that they connect to other natural fissures, and lead right beneath the city itself. One of these fabled tunnels was supposedly built to connect the pirate Blackbeard‘s house to the docks, for the purposes of smuggling.

My friend started climbing, and was making good progress at first. It turned out however that the shaft opened up into a bottleneck after a drop of roughly ten feet; one moment he was making his way down a narrow well shaft, and then suddenly the walls disappeared from around him, and he was swinging free in the darkness. He panicked, and his foot got twisted in the rope – tangling worse the more he tried to struggle.

As I said before, the caver did not fall.

He struggled blindly to the bottom after losing his torch and one of his shoes, the ladder coming to pieces in his hands, and at the end of the rope he dropped with a heavy splash into the water beneath. Shaking and shivering, up to his chest in the black water, he called up to me to get help.

Unsurprisingly the cave didn’t have mobile reception – so I had to climb all the way back out, and get down to the main road. I called the fire brigade, waited, and then flagged down the engine when it arrived. There was nowhere to park along the busy main road however, so soon there were police on site redirecting the traffic into one lane. I had to lead a team of four firemen down the shaft, through the narrow crack and into the main chamber, all the way to the edge of the pit.

Sending a man on a harness and winch down the hole to fetch my friend was easy enough, but the fire brigade didn’t leave just like that – the members of the White Watch team had no idea that these tunnels even existed up until now. Equipped with harnesses, climbing ropes and spotlights, they couldn’t resist the chance to have a little explore around the caves for themselves.

When we eventually made it back out to the light of day, we were in for a surprise; five fire engines, two ambulances and a police car stood in wait, while traffic was backed up as far as the eye could see. The fire brigade must have been having a quiet day, as most of them were down in the tunnels already. A couple of paramedics insisted on giving us a check over in the back of an ambulance, but it was the next meeting I was dreading.

As it turned out though, Her Majesty’s Finest were a pretty reasonable bunch. The two of us got a good telling off, but no more. After all, the caves were located on public ground and we walked in freely – Old Bill had nothing on us.

“Do you always dress like that when you go caving?” one officer asked, sneering at my trainers.

So the moral of the story is… well, I expect you’ve already worked it out.
29 September 2012
Urban Exploration in Ukraine: Deep in the Drains of Kiev

Deep beneath the domes and spires of Kiev’s Old Town, and unbeknown to the crowds who flock to the monasteries, monuments and cathedrals above, there exists another world.

Of course, Ukraine boasts more than its fair share of appealing destinations for urban explorers – from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to the Odessa Catacombs – and yet surprisingly little has been written about the vast network of drains, tunnels and mines, which spread for many miles beneath the capital city of Kiev.

I was lucky enough to receive the guided tour of Kiev’s secret underworld, courtesy of General Kosmosa. It’s a good thing, too – the winding passages and restrictive tunnels that form this subterranean network seemed to branch off in all directions, some leading deeper into disused mines beneath the city, others culminating in abrupt dead-ends.

We entered the tunnels through a simple wooden hatch set in a concrete base, located in a stretch of rough ground near the city’s financial district. As I climbed carefully down the ladder and into the darkness, patches of rust and limescale came off the rungs in great, wet flakes – staining my palms a livid shade of orange.

The first trapezoid tunnel we entered into seemed to stretch on forever, a corrugated tube of concrete that faded to black in both directions. With the General leading the way, our party of three made our way upstream through the darkness, cold water rushing past our feet at ankle level. The uniform tunnels were roughly five foot in height, forcing us to hunch over as we trudged onwards.

From this main waterway a number of passages forked off at tangents, each one disappearing into dark spaces filled with the sound of running water. At one point I managed to loose sight of the others, while pausing briefly to take a photograph – running to catch up I took the wrong turning where the path divided neatly in two. It only took me a few minutes to realise I had gone the wrong way and find the rest of the group, but the experience brought home the very real danger of getting lost in this labyrinthine underworld.

After ten, maybe even twenty minutes of the same endless, corrugated tunnels (my awareness of time decreasing inversely to my developing night vision), we reached a vertical shaft. This narrow opening at the end of the tunnel had the appearance of a subterranean waterfall; a metal ladder set into the back wall, obscured behind a cascading torrent of cold water.

Torch and camera stowed safely inside a waterproof bag, I followed my guide up the ladder – the water quickly soaking me to the skin, and making for a slow and treacherous climb.

On this next level the ribbed concrete tunnels gave way to rough-hewn rock, and more than once I cracked my head on low-hanging stalactites. Another five minutes upstream however the tunnel finally opened up above us, and we entered into a vast, vaulted chamber. Fractured light spilled in from the slatted roof, illuminating the deep, round shaft – lined with concrete roundels and hung with rusted gantries – in which we now stood.

Far above our heads, beyond the iron grating, lay the heart of Kiev’s financial district. Many of these tunnels were installed as a back-up water supply by Stalin, during the Soviet era. However, these newer sections were merely extensions to a much older network of tunnels, which riddle the ground beneath the city – as we were to find out by delving deeper into the warren of pipes and passages.

Initially we tried following the other main passage feeding into this central chamber, but we didn’t get far before finding our path blocked by fallen rubble.

Seemingly unperturbed, our guide led us back to the last chamber; choosing instead a smaller, rocky shaft that led off at a tangent. I found myself wondering (and not for the last time) how he had managed to commit to memory such a complex network of tunnels.

The next excitement came as our path opened up onto a large vertical shaft; here the slow stream we had been following trickled out along an extended lip, high above the floor below, before cascading down a drainage funnel. We were granted no such conduit however, and so upon reaching the slippery overhang we had to climb across onto a rusted metal gantry fastened to the wall nearby. From here it was possible to make one’s way down a series of iron ladders, suspended at varying angles in a haphazard zigzag pattern… a precarious climb indeed, down four flights of slippery, rust-encrusted rungs.

From here we trekked through a long concrete tube, resembling a scaled-down train tunnel. After perhaps ten minutes, the end not even nearly in sight, General Kosmosa stopped us by a side turning. Here the tunnels were much smaller, older, and cut in two by the newer installation.

The General told us that these were the remains of a system of mine shafts, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century; and as we crawled along the narrow shaft, I found myself imagining what it must have been like to work these mines, so far removed from the light of day. The air tasted thin, and fungus grew from the damp walls.

Occasionally we found traces of life – alcoves set into the walls held spaces for bowls and flasks, places where miners would stop to rest or refresh themselves.

At times the progress was almost unbearable. The passages were so small that movement was severely limited; the ceiling often pressing low enough that we were forced to pull ourselves forward on our elbows.

As the cold water continued to splash around my forearms, sometimes reaching as high as my chin, I prayed we wouldn’t encounter a flash flood – it would have been near impossible to reverse out of such a confined space.

Not only did the tunnel seem to be without an end, but it was also noticeably decreasing in size. I had almost reached the point of questioning our guide’s sanity, when finally we came across a junction, and dragged ourselves out of the rocky shaft and into one of the newer concrete tunnels.

From here it was an easy walk to our exit… we emerged much as we had entered the drains, through a nondescript hatch set in a patch of rough ground. Fresh air had never tasted so sweet. We dried ourselves as best we could, changed our clothes, and I threw my ruined shoes in the nearest bin. After that we bought a few bottles of strong Ukrainian beer and sat on a wall in the park, watching the sun go down over the city.

All in all a fantastic day out, and a great first foray into the underside of one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Thanks once again to General Kosmosa for making this expedition possible… and if you’re interested in keeping up to date with his adventures, then you can pay a visit to his own urban exploration blog here.

14 July 2012
Exploring an Abandoned Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship

The Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, sometimes simply referred to as the Russian Monument, is a striking tribute to the former friendship shared by these two powers.

Located in the outskirts of Varna, down on the Black Sea coast, the monument stands on a hill at 110m above sea level. The interior is deceptively large. It features a former museum hall, a small conference space and a network of other rooms and corridors. On the ground floor the monument (or perhaps more accurately, ‘memorial house’) contained a bookshop, while deep beneath the hill it stands on there lurks a now-derelict bomb shelter.

EDIT:
This article, posted back in 2012, is the first thing I ever wrote about Bulgaria’s communist-era monuments. Since then I have spent half a decade researching the subject, and I know a lot more about it now than I did back then. For that reason, I have edited this article down to just the story of what I saw and experienced during those early visits.

The historical information that I previously included here – dates, details and symbolism – has now been improved, updated and expanded, to feature on a new page dedicated to the Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship.

You can read more about my ongoing project to catalogue and study the monuments of former communist regimes here.

Alternatively, scroll down for the original story that kicked off my obsession.

The Varna Monument

I first saw the monument from the road. Driving past along the coast with a local friend, I was startled to look inland and find a surreal concrete colossus towering over me. “What the hell is that?” I asked, and my friend told me, Just some old Russian rubbish.

The next day I came back on foot, to take a closer look – climbing the several hundred steps to the monument in the shadow of those Brutalist wings.

Once upon a time, visitors to this monument were greeted with music. A total of 180 floodlights illuminated the monument at night, while speakers set up through the surrounding park played Shostakovich’s Symphony № 7 on constant repeat.

For the full effect, hit Play before you read on.

Day One

Everything I’d read online suggested there was simply no way inside the Russian Monument. Entrances had been bricked up, apparently, or otherwise sealed; another report claimed that the hollow interior was now used as a dumping ground for used car tyres. On my first visit to the site, I didn’t hold out any hope for actually getting inside the thing.

As I climbed the broad steps, the monument towered ominously above the park – seething with the silent majesty of some ancient, forgotten temple.

I took a few photos of the impressive figures on the wings of the monument, and it wasn’t long before I’d spotted a way in. Someone had taken a hammer to the bricks that barred the entrance: leaving a hole just large enough to scramble through. Faster than you could say “Park-Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship,” I was inside.

Once my eyes had accustomed to the dark, I was eventually able to make out a flight of bare concrete steps leading upwards, into the left-hand portion of the monument. On reaching the top the passage turned back on itself, and the corridor before me disappeared into darkness.

There is a somehow otherworldly quality to the atmosphere inside the Russian Monument.

The darkness is absolute, and at times suffocating – many thousands of tonnes of concrete stand between you and the light of day. Not only that, but even the slightest sound can create long echoes inside this cubist warren of tunnels and stairwells. It wasn’t just my own footsteps that were haunting me; the surrounding park is sometimes frequented by stray dogs and every howl from outside would become trapped inside the monument, distorting as it followed me from room to room.

By this point I was realising just how poorly prepared I was; in the absence of a torch I was using my mobile phone to light the way, while my camera was running fatally low on battery. But for now, I persevered.

It is hard to imagine from the outside, just how much space there is inside the monument. Neatly arranged into cleverly tessellated corridors, chambers and stairwells, at several points I found myself losing my way inside the labyrinth. After a while I stumbled upon a series of steps leading upwards, and on following them found that they opened into natural light. Relieved, I followed the stairs out onto the rooftop of the monument. Situated above the female figures on the left-hand wing, this area offered breathtaking views over the city below, and the Black Sea coast.

Later I found myself following another flight of steps, this one set into the middle of the floor, and disappearing down into an inky darkness. Tentatively making my way to the lower level, I was met by a cold gust of wind from below. I followed another flight down, this one fenced in by a rusted iron banister. Since entering the monument, I had completely lost my sense of both time and space. By now my instincts told me that I’d gone down too many steps… that I could no longer be inside the monument itself, but that I had to have passed down into the ground beneath it.

I was in a basement, I realised, set into the massive concrete platform on which the monument stands. The place was a wreck, with little evidence offered as to its former use. I discovered a hole punched through the brick wall of the foyer – and from here, I found myself stood at the top of a vast flight of stairs, heading down deeper into the earth.

With no way of knowing how far – or even where – the steps led, and with no torch or camera anymore, I decided to make a temporary retreat. The tunnel could wait until the following day.

Day Two

I returned to the monument the following day, and this time entered on the lower floor – through an access point I had spotted before, located at the rear of the monument. Inside I passed though a series of bare rooms, and past the narrow concrete stairwell which spiralled back up into the body of the monument above.

There was foul smell in the place, and following it I found that the former bookshop had been used more recently as a toilet. Mounds of human excrement covered the dusty floor like a minefield, where soiled strips of newspaper blew in the breeze that came in from a barred window in the concrete wall. At the time, I guessed this was the work of passing pedestrians – only later would I realise how naive it was to assume that I was alone inside this strange structure.

I returned to the grand staircase that led down into the earth, though even with a powerful torch it was still impossible to see the end of it. It reminded me of the steps going down into a London tube station – only here without passengers, without light, and with strange symbols painted onto the walls in the place of adverts for West End musicals.

These wide concrete steps were an exact mirror of the ‘Staircase of Victors’, directly above. Regularly spaced holes had been tunnelled near the ceiling – arranged so as to dimly illuminate the odd characters on the walls. Eventually I reached the bottom, where the steps culminated in a pair of ominous double doors. They were locked, of course – with a sheet of metal welded to the bars from behind.

A little disappointed, I was about to head back up… when I noticed, half hidden by discarded timbers, a small hole in the ground. On closer inspection this hole, no more than a foot across, appeared to open down into a tunnel. I shone my torch in, to see a passage leading away beneath the doors in the direction of whatever lay beyond them.

I couldn’t resist. I managed to squeeze myself feet-first through the hole, and climb down to the ground using a series of rusted pipes which jutted from the wall. From here it was a slow crawl, through a tunnel that gradually shrank – until I was wriggling forwards on my belly, and wondering how hard it would be to crawl back out in reverse.

After what seemed like an eternity I found a large access hole in the concrete above me, where voluminous pipes entered the bunker from directly beneath. However, even this had been sealed with a metal plate, which appeared to be welded in place. Luckily this opening did at least give me enough space to turn around and crawl back out… but I was left wondering exactly what they had in there, behind the doors.

Making my way back up, I took the staircase into the monument itself. Angular concrete surrounded me, a hard concrete passage that spiral up in darkness until I found myself emerging into a large space filled with stepped seating – some kind of conference space, inside the left wing of the monument. Heading from there into the right-hand wing via the network of passages in between, I revisited the massive three-dimensional star I’d seen before, It was etched so deep into the far wall that three people could have comfortably sat inside the hollow.

I was preparing to leave, when my torchlight fell across something I had failed to spot on my previous visit; a recessed staircase in a darkened corner, heading upwards and out of sight.

I followed it, and as I climbed upwards I began to detect light ahead: accompanied by as a loud flapping noise. It sounded as though a whole flock of birds had somehow become trapped inside the structure.

Tentatively rounding the last corner I came into a well-lit chamber, with narrow windows spaced evenly along one side. These windows caught the wind, which ripped and tore about inside the concrete chamber – pulling and tearing noisily at the odd assortment of sacks and bin bags that filled the room.

At first, I couldn’t work out why anybody would have dragged so much rubbish up to the very top of the monument. There were food containers smeared with grey mould, countless items of ragged, nondescript clothing, and in the far corner, a pile of blankets… realisation then dawned on me pretty quickly. I was standing in somebody’s home. Presumably, it was the same somebody who had been defecating in the bookshop, and who probably knew every corner and crevice of the darkened spaces around me.

But perhaps the most disconcerting artefact in this makeshift bedroom, was a small arrangement of objects by one of the windows.

A couple of cushions were being used as a kind of desk, around which were arranged a selection of men’s shoes, slippers and women’s high heels, as well as some engineering magazines printed in Cyrillic script. Beside them, an assortment of electronic items: including a mains transformer, a television remote and a few pieces of circuitry that resembled the insides of a calculator.

It appeared that whoever lived here was either trying to build something, or simply collecting bizarre trophies.

Either way, I suddenly began to feel very uncomfortable. Whoever it was, this individual had chosen to live in a wind-blasted obelisk miles from the city centre, and surrounded by filth and decay. The building featured so many dark corners, hidden balconies and sunken recesses, that I began to wonder if I had been alone all this time, after all.

And that drew an end to my visit. Swiftly and quietly, I made my way back down the staircase, through the main body of the monument, and then back outside through the basement exit at the back. I left the Russian Monument feeling disorientated, awestruck and slightly alarmed, my bare forearms still itching from the fibre glass dust in the tunnels down below. As I walked away, a final irony crossed my mind; that even in death, this condemned relic of Bulgarian communism is providing free shelter to the homeless proletariat, otherwise ignored by a modern democratic republic.

6 April 2012