Chateau du Foret (fail) and Villa Albanaise, Belgium - October 2013

[hushhushvideo]

Before heading to the Villa Albanaise we decided to check out the Chateau du Foret. We parked the car in a village 2km away and walked there. After criss-crossing the forest for 10 minutes we arrived at the back of the chateau. Built in 1860 in the Neo-Tudor style, and formerly owned by a Belgian Royal, it has been empty for over 10 years, while the heirs battle it out in the courts.We took a few shots, then, as we headed round to the front entrance we heard voices. We peeked over the bushes. Two cops were standing there. Did they know we were coming? Back into the undergrowth quick, I leapt over the most evil smelling ditch of stagnant water and plowed face first into a pool of nettles. As we approached the road we spotted a police car slowly circling the perimeter. We ducked, waited. Then jumped over the fence to safety.

Or so we thought. It turned out the cops had parked up ahead, scouring the forest. We innocently walked past them. But they decided to follow us. Two non-French speakers with cameras in the middle of nowhere, the excuses just weren’t good enough. They searched us, the car and checked the passports. In the end, they let us go. Apparently there had been a burglary that night. Who knows!

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Villa Albanaise.

A large Albanian family lived here for 30 years. In 2007 they moved out and put the Villa on the market. It is still on sale, but the asking price is too high, so no buyers have come forward.

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After the squatters left the pigeons arrived, now they too are moving on....

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The smell...

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All in all the trip was a bit of a fail:

Villa Onder Ons (Occupied)
Chateau Grand Ferrand (Recently secured, didn't find an entrance)
Villa Wallfahrt (Good explore)
St Hilarious (Being converted into retirement flats)
Chateau du Foret (Police!)
Villa Albanaise (Trashed and almost empty)
Villa Denis (Converted)
Chateau Rouge (overrun with paintballers)
Atelier Decor (It's still there, but not much left inside)


hushhushvideo (http://hushhushvideo.com/)

[UrbanAssassin14]

Good stuff mate, you wouldn't want to go eye to eye with some of those foriegn police officers (sorry for the bad joke. It gets a bit desperate on this site these days). I can't wait to do some international explores someday though, some fantastic sites out on the continent. Good work for getting out there and sacrificing your face in the name of Urbex. :smile

[hushhushvideo]

Thanks, they were a bit full on in the beginning, until I started speaking in French to them, by the end they were showing us pics of the inside on their phones. Thinking about it now, we should probably have hidden in the forest for half an hour till the coast was clear. It was fun. :smile
Belgium is so small, some locations were only 10 minutes apart, just need to find the locations that are still worth visiting.

[UrbanAssassin14]

Yeah i've heard that's normally the trick, impress them by speaking in their own language, too bad i'm hopeless at learning differen't languages fluently, i just remember key phrases i may need, it should do haha. Exploring sure is fun, even if sometimes access is denied for some reason. Being 10 minutes away from decent sites would be great for me as i live in the countryside in the "Desolate" North East of England, sites worth visiting are normally miles away from eachother.

[hushhushvideo]

Belgium does seem unusually convenient for exploring. Scotland might be quite good too, there's a girl on youtube uploading loads of stuff from there. Some of the locations look really good.

[UrbanAssassin14]

Yeah for sure, been planning a trip to Scotland for whenever and a lot of decent looking sites aren't too far away from eachother.

[ERNIE99_UK]

nice to see some stuff from the continent, seems like theres the same problems with stuff been inaccessible over there too now.