Part of a road trip to the low countries in late 2010 with Urbanity & Spungletrumpet.
For a Brit going to Europe, stopping off here is mandatory. It actually has 'Der strafrechtlich verfolgt wird sein' written in English and 'Go home Englischer scum'  tagged everywhere. The so called 'West Park of Europe' is so beautiful, but also has been explored more times than Jordan's snatch. So common and 'noob' is it, that the 'so-called-pro' explorers have to hide it on their urber cool sites.

Getting there was a herculean task, and full props go to trip chauffeur Urbanity. Who picked me up in the morning at Heathrow, and drove all of us to Dover, then through Belgium, into Holland (where we stopped at a Teddy Bear restaurant and also partook of some local Dutch herbs, but that's another story) and then the Rhur valley in Germany. We arrived late in the evening. And then set about finding a way in. I thought a very obvious way in would do, but the feeling was there might be a better way. So we walked around the site, and found lots of fences and industrial strength brambles, but no real access. So in the end we grabbed our stuff and took the easy route in. This is a bad photo of the building.

Entrance to the mine building was easy, as there were so many smashed windows. And it wasn't long before we were looking for somewhere a bit out the way to settle down for the night and do some pro-hoboing (© TheWinch).  Spungletrumpet and I laid out in the shower area, after kicking as much of the glass out the way as we could. Urbanity had a medical condition (massive piles!), so slept just outside the room on a bench.  My 'room' for the night.

We packed our stuff up, and set about exploring the mine building. A huge shower room in Germany (no sick jokes please). We slept at the top end of it.

Fisheye in the main hall with the baskets.

This is the reason we came so far, the amazing room full of hanging baskets. The story goes that miners would put their civilian clothes into the baskets, and hoist them to the ceiling. Then at the end of the shift, if there were any left. They knew that there was a miner/s still down there. Fisheye shot.

Dirty cloth.

The hooks on the benches reminded me of school.

At the far end of the room were loads of lockers. One would guess this is where the miners working clothes were kept, as well as valuables while down the mine.

A full fisheye of the main hall.

There were smaller rooms in the area above the main hall, maybe for senior workers, or women maybe.

Stairs down into an admin section.

shelving racks knocked about in the admin section.

Mini lockers in the admin section.

And with the sound of large diggers and lorries moving about across the road, it was time to make a move and find some breakfast.