The best urbex trips end with muddy boots, cold hands and a camera roll worth keeping. The bad ones tend to end with a phone call to somebody's partner. The difference is rarely luck. It is the ten minutes you spend standing outside the building before you step through the door.
What follows is a working checklist: fifteen checks to run before you enter a derelict building in the UK. Some take seconds. A few need doing the night before. None of them are dramatic, and that is rather the point.
The Fifteen Checks
Run these in order. If you cannot answer yes to all of them, you have your answer already.
- Check the forecast for the hours you will actually be inside, not just the drive there.
- Check sunset to the minute and build in a 90-minute buffer before it.
- Check the tide if the site is coastal, estuarine or reached by a causeway, tunnel or beach.
- Tell someone exactly where you are going, with a map reference or what3words, and agree a check-in time.
- Confirm two working torches and spare batteries for the main one.
- Assess the building from outside: sagging roofline, lean, fresh cracks, smoke, new boarding, signs of recent work.
- Identify your entrance and, more importantly, your exit.
- Establish whether anyone else is on site — contractors, security, other groups, or people sleeping rough.
- Check your footwear and gloves are actually up to it, not just in the car boot from last time.
- Decide your dust plan. FFP3 mask on before you disturb anything, and if you suspect asbestos, do not disturb anything at all.
- Treat all electrics as live — cables, switchgear, sockets, conduit, light fittings.
- Read the floors before you trust them, especially timber ones.
- Confirm your exit route is still open before you go deeper than the first room.
- Agree what happens if someone gets hurt: who stays, who goes for signal, what you say on the call.
- Set a hard turnaround time and stick to it, even if the light is perfect.
Structure, Floors and the Things You Cannot See
In British urbex, floors take more people to hospital than anything else. Victorian mill floors, hospital corridors, warehouse mezzanines and school stairwells were not built to be left wet for twenty years. Water gets in through missing roof sheets, dry rot spreads along joists, and the whole thing looks perfectly solid right up until it isn't.
Walk the edge of a room first, where joists are usually supported, and look for the warning signs: a dip in the middle, a floor that springs underfoot, tiles that have lifted, skirting boards pulling away from the wall. A long stick or a monopod will test suspect boards far better than your bodyweight. Bouncing on a floor to "see if it holds" is how people end up in basements.
Asbestos is the other quiet one. It was not fully banned in UK construction until 1999, so plenty of standing buildings still contain it — cement roof sheets, pipe lagging, insulating board, floor tiles, gaskets, textured coatings. If it is intact and undisturbed, you can simply walk past it. If you are breaking it, sweeping it or kicking up dust in a room full of it, a disposable mask from a hardware shop is not protection. Stop, leave, and treat the decision as a serious one rather than something to guess at.
Other hazards in the same family: chemical drums with faded labels, sharps, medical waste in old hospitals, standing water in basements, and gas or fuel smells. If something smells wrong, it usually is.
Weather, Light and Timing
Rain changes a site more than most people expect. Concrete goes greasy, slate and cast iron become genuinely dangerous, and low-lying basements, culverts and undercrofts can fill quickly. Wind matters most when you are high up — on a roof, a gantry or a chimney stack — and gusts at height are always stronger than the forecast suggests at ground level.
Cold is a real risk in winter, particularly once you are wet and standing still. So is heat in a metal-roofed building in July. Plan around daylight: a headtorch is for getting out, not for a full explore. Coastal sites need the tide table checked twice, before you set off and again on arrival, and remember the tide does not always come in the direction you expect. See also frost: icy ladders, iron stairs and wet tiles turn a straightforward site into a different proposition.
Kit, Access and the Law
You do not need much, but you do need the right much.
- Two torches, one a headtorch, plus spare batteries.
- Gloves with a decent grip, ideally cut-resistant.
- Boots with ankle support and a sole that copes with wet stone.
- FFP3 masks, one each, not one shared.
- Charged phone, power bank, and your location already shared.
- Small first aid kit, water and something to eat.
- Nothing loose — no dangling straps, no jewellery, no bag you cannot climb with.
On access: an open door is not permission, and a forced one is a different situation entirely. In the UK, entering land without permission is generally a civil matter in England and Wales, but it can become criminal — for example where damage is caused, where a site has specific protection, or where behaviour goes beyond simply being there. Scotland and Northern Ireland work differently again, and individual sites often have their own rules. If you are unsure about a particular building, take proper legal advice rather than relying on what a forum said in 2014.
Emergency Planning and People
Never go in alone. Two is the minimum, three is better, and a group of nine is a liability. Before you go in, agree the practical bits: where you will meet if you get separated, who holds the map, and what time you stop.
If someone is injured, do not move them if you suspect a spinal injury or a broken leg, and do not send the whole group running. One person stays, one goes for signal. Give the operator the location first — a postcode is ideal, but what3words, a grid reference or "the old mill off the B-road, north of the village" all work. Worth knowing: texting 999 in the UK only works if the phone has been registered for emergency SMS in advance, so sort that out before you need it.
Your check-in arrangement is the safety net for everything else. If you have not messaged by the agreed time, the person at home should be calling for help, not wondering whether to bother you.
The best exit is the one you checked on the way in — not the one you are hoping to find on the way out.
Thirty Seconds at the Threshold
Stand at the door, torch on, and run the last few questions: is my exit still clear, has my phone got charge, does everyone know the turnaround time, and does anyone have a genuine reason to say no today? Tired, injured, under-equipped, or pulled along by a group that is not listening — any of those is a good enough reason to walk away.
The building has been standing for forty years. It will survive without you for another week.
Photo: dshap / Pixabay
