Sunday afternoon and the time had come to 'sneak in'. I sometimes get more nervous than others and this time I was pretty nervous. I went round through the 'back door' as usual. Through shoulder high nettles and thistles (pricking and pumping formic acid even through my clothes) until I was soaked in sweat. I saw a vehicle and assumed it was security parked up. It was probably hard to stay awake on a warm August afternoon. I still felt very nervy.
Making it across an overgrown, circuitous route to the far end of the site I tripped out of a copse almost into the path of a young guy. To use the most over-used word of the British gold medal athletes, 'unbelievable'. I just said hello and turns out he was a young guy doing research on the impact on the local animal populations. He was annoyed that birds were dying, 'someone's shooting them'. We wandered along together for a while, accidentally herding some 'Hawaiin geese' in front of us till they started to honk noisily. I remember from somewhere that geese make great guard dogs. So we went our separate ways.
The construction work I was there to photograph had mostly finished. The image of a wall above is a detail from a colossal new warehouse/factory that is almost ready for use. It's topographic calm totally unrelated to the stressy slog to get to it.
On the way back out I wanted to detour to an even bigger related site but I caught sight of two men who'd have seen me cross a stretch of open land to get to it so retreated, annoyed with myself. Once back out and on the main road I circle the perimeter and, physically exhausted, toddled up to the front and despite the noise of generators and gas turbines and some parked cars around I wandered around the edge where I wanted to be and, even if the photos are nothingy, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I made it, despite the anxiousness being set to HIGH all day.
And I got to wear my new boots.
