Usines Béghin Corbehem: France March/April 2018

**The industrial wasteland in Corbehem.**

Having visited this site two weeks previous with little time to spare I made plans to return and properly explore the vast industrial site that not many had noticed even though Centrale Two had seen a lot of traffic over the past year.

The above image is taken from the roof of Centrale Two. The brick building to the right is Centrale One, the partly demolished part of the building are the remains of PM3 and PM4. To the left are the TMP Building, the warehouse and PM5 in the distance.

So first of all we visit Centrale One a beautiful old abandoned power station with an epic control wall which nearly spans the length of the turbine hall. Attached to this are the remains of the PM3 and PM4 paper mills. You can clearly see above demolition is well in progress where most of the walls are missing.

We then climb up a walkway to cross over the canal and visit Centrale Two a 1960s power plant with an awesome wood panelled control room.

We then head back across the canal and wander through various buildings not finding much of interest. We eventually find ourselves in the next large building. Sadly this is a huge loading bay and not much of interest, while having a look through the offices here we decide to have a rest and enjoy an out of date can of orange soda which we had found. There is a bridge joining this building to PM5. It shows promise but it is sealed and no access can be found.

We head back outside and see a huge shuttered door wide open. Well that's going to be easy, or so we thought. There is a mountain of rubble and rebar which we have to scale and climb over to gain access to PM5. The place is huge and so much to see and we spend a fair amount of time in here.

We have one building left. We pass a security camera and don’t think too much of it. After circling the building we can’t seem to find any access. Its time to head up on another walkway but still no luck. Lucky timing as security are doing rounds, they seem quite frantic and are driving quickly around the site. Unsure if they are aware of our presence or just having fun to pass the time we press on. Behind Closed Doors finds a precarious way of getting on to the roof and disappears. I chill on the walkway and have a drink and some food. Eventually I here from Andy and we have access he leaves a door open and comes back to collect his gear. It seems security have calmed down but not taking any risks we make a dash for it and find ourselves inside. We wander around grabbing some shots mostly in darkness before wandering across the rubble to make our escape.

We finally leave and there is one more part I wanted to visit the old outdoor pool. Sadly it seems security are parked by my car and heading towards the pool. We dump our bags in the boot quickly and head to Buffalo Grill for a well desrved feast.

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