Lee Jones

"Be gay, do crime": Visiting Abandoned Places with Sarah

Added 2021-07-26 14:10:15 +0000 UTC

Robyn’s pal Sarah was visiting this past week, and we had the task of showing her around some abandoned sites during her stay. It was so hot that the dogs only managed to join us for the first day as there was adequate cloud cover.

We started with Lennox Castle Hospital. There’s a wee hole in the fence when approaching from the main path, so it’s easy to get in and explore around. Some of the boards had been ripped off the windows, so climbing through and seeing some of the ruined interior was easy enough. There’s a precarious rope swing right in the middle, latched onto some exposed metal framework high up that gave me the fear, Robyn decided to swing on it. 10/10 would not recommend. I waited in horror with Sarah, and thankfully it didn’t cave in. The building itself is great, though.

Some of the photos throughout are wild looking, I used a colour profile that emulates the look of Kodak Aerochrome. It’s fun to try something new from time to time.

We headed back to the car and headed to St Peter’s Seminary, stopping off via Balloch Castle to check out the gardens and also so the dogs could take a dip in Loch Lomond. Marshall isn’t afraid of the water now.

I’ve visted St Peter’s Seminary before, but I don’t think it will ever become boring. There’s always some new graffiti, or new routes to other areas freshly ‘unlocked’ once the council or whoever re-seals the old ones. Obviously places like this aren’t the safest, but use common sense and you will likely be fine. Stick together, etc.

That was it for one day, and the dogs stayed home from then on.

Before we continued the abandoned places spree the following day, we took an obligatory visit to the Necropolis with a few ciders.

It was 23°C at 9pm. What is happening? I haven’t slept properly in days.

The final places on this trip were the derelict Estate at Port Glasgow, as… I thought(!) I had blogged about before but it turns out that’s in the past month or so of me not updating this thing.

Ok, so the estate comprises of 400 flats, with only 20 or so occupants left. It’s surreal to walk around. Many of the flats are burned out, still with furniture etc. Old Argos catalogues scattered about, mail, and pet name tags. I’ve kept any visit there brief, as I feel like it could go south real quick.

Up next was Buchanan Castle.

It was decided that this was where I was going to take Sarah’s photo, and I was so preoccupied trying to find usable light that I completely forgot to take photographs of the actual damn castle aside from this first photo with all the ivy scaling up one of the interior walls. Fortunately though, Robyn was shooting my Q2 and took some great photos while I was taking Sarah’s portrait so I’ve scattered a couple in here!

We’d left it a little too late to get to the castle, and the available light inside was mostly a bust for taking portraits as I left my fastest lens at home, but we did get some that I am pretty happy with considering.

It was still insanely hot once we’d finished at the castle, so we decided to drive home via Balloch Castle and Loch Lomond to cool off in the water. The sun was setting and I took some more photos of Sarah here. I’m way happier with the lighting in these ones, and the ones in the water are some of my favourite photos I’ve taken in a while.