Tales of the Urban Explorer: Return to Kruger Tissue International

Kruger Tissue International’, it had been four years since I had driven down the shaky, muddy road and deliberately parked my car a good half mile from the entrance.

That’s the good thing about a re-visit: you are armed with at least some knowledge of how to get in and what to look out for.

However, this was not a simple revisit. This industrial behemoth was far too large for a single sitting, and the first time around, I was solo and got spooked after an hour of near-complete silence broken by the howling wind, rusty corrugated iron groaning and the fear of security.

Both @anidiotexplores and I had been here before independently, him setting off the alarms and me miraculously avoiding tripping any.

Within months, we were collaborating, and ‘Kruger Tissue International’ was always going to come up on the menu again particularly as neither of us managed ALL of it.

The weather was shit, rain was threatening, and normally I would abandon the day as I am strictly a fair-weather explorer.

Taking a decent cover photo of ‘Kruger Tissue International’ is nigh impossible. It’s massive and in a valley with no decent viewpoints whatsoever. It's those dodgy-looking buildings in the background and that is as good as it gets.

We entered via the side, down a slippery bank, knowing full well there were cameras, and the security likely had not lapsed.

It was a question of getting in the closest building and hoping we had not been picked up on their cameras.

Making our way through the areas I had done previously, we came to yet more broken-down buildings deeper in the valley, ones we had never seen before. It was to come at a cost.

I had not seen an array of bottles with suspicious looking contents since long ago in Bradford, in the basement of an old factory. Could they be drinkable, were they penis enlargement potions? I figure yes.

Already, I could see the deeper valley sights of ‘Kruger Tissue International’ were going to be like the higher ones, and that’s not a bad thing. The entire complex was older and more wrecked, but security has stopped it from being vandalised.

So coated with shit that you can’t make out what they were used for.

‘Kruger Tissue International’ always had plenty of stairs, mostly metal ones that don’t collapse when you set foot on them.

Dungeons were also common, with a big light being needed. @anidiotexplorers tends to bring shit lighting, those pound shop lights work for around 10 minutes before shutting off.

Ooo.. some nice graffiti. If just shows that if you can get here undetected, you have the place to yourself.

This room was not familiar; I never made it here the first time around, and what a view. It helps, of course, if there is glass in the windows, which there wasn't.

While I’d love to claim this note was written in 1901, it's more likely to be 2001. Blimey, that’s a quarter of a century ago, feels like just yesterday.

Sorry, we were not given eye protection when we entered, so we were forced to break the rules.

1989, it’s getting better. That was printed, likely on a dot-matrix printer, a relic of that decade.

The office we had found was getting more interesting by the minute, books everywhere just left, and for how long… decades?

It’s all heavy machinery talk, not the stuff I know anything about.

Is that for removing your eyeballs, hold still... this won’t hurt?

Blades and PPE. Isn’t that a term a little new for ‘Kruger Tissue International’ whose doors closed long ago?

It was quite wrecked in areas, but who wrecked it? I can’t see all this broken glass breaking itself.

What an explore. Stairs everywhere, creepy descents, dripping water making you apprehensive. It was just as I remembered it.

Rolatrucs were the main form of manual transport in the 1980’s, besides Kwiksave, who were too tight to buy branded goods.

I had a feeling of Deja-Vu in the part of the old industrial factory. Could it be that I had been here on my initial visit?

.. or was it just more of the same stuff I saw 4 years ago?

Not bad, but it’s a little old and fading.

By now it was pissing down, and we were starting to feel miserable. Urban Exploring and rain make for a bad mixture.

Had any cameras caught our movement? Probably, and if so, a security bloke would be here soon.

I was glad to be back inside and out of the shit weather.

Even inside, it was sodden, and the concrete office, as appealing as it looked, wasn’t going to be visited.

Fucking hell, why can’t all these little buildings be connected together?

What do you make of that? Someone has a seriously warped head!

Welcome to… what? I hadn’t been in this one before, and maybe it could hold some goodies.

It was an office with a serious peeling paint problem, and with many papers scattered around.

I’m still trying to figure this one out. My Hay wants a position at Kanga, yet is using Kanga letterhead paper, and where does British Cellephane Ltd come into this? Where does Mr Hay currently work?

1974.., from another time, that’s a bit of a wow.

A dull-sounding reference from 1991. You can’t say Mr Worrall was a lazy cunt who slept on the company sofa all day eating crisps while masturbating, true or not, or you, as the employer, are in hot water.

For keys, I think, but there are none to be seen, just a lot of rust.

I looked out of the window and sighed. There was no sign of the shit weather easing up. Soon, we would be getting wet again.

The management meets here to discuss how to make their tissues more effective. Behind them, there’s a kind of painted distraction, but it is quite effective.

I picked it up and asked for security, no response. What a crap service.

What’s your choice: some paperwork, a rusty key, or syringes filled with the finest cut heroin?

We were about to leave when @anidiotexplores noticed an overweight security bloke tramping down a nearby road, and he quickly shot back out of sight.

“Security.., I’m going to make a run for it”

Fuck, here we go...

I followed, and an ensuing ‘HOYYY!' quickly pursued us. Why run when they will just ask you to leave?

That’s the theory, but I have heard about the aggressive types, and it pushed me on. Up a muddy bank, slipping everywhere, panting for breath... but finally in the trees and no sign of pursuit.

We had made it, or had we?

A van stopped in front of us, with the security dude who looked distinctly unhappy.

“You two thieves were in there, weren’t you?”, he snarled with a thick Polish accent.

I started to deny it, and that we were gay lovers just completing a romantic walk in the hills while being drenched by never-ending rain.

He wasn’t buying it, so we had to lay our hands out.

“Did you steal anything?” he said, looking us up and down.

I was tempted to mention the 60ft by 30ft filthy, rust-covered, sodden industrial lathe that ‘could’ have been nestling up my jumper, but thought better of it.

He lightened up considerably when he discovered our true intentions.

“You,” he said, pointing at @anidiotexplorers, “are pretty quick — but you…” he added, turning to me with a smirk, “you need to work on your running speed. You’re slow.”

...'well, thanks very fucking much, you chubby cunt, it could well be related to my age, and I noticed you made no effort to chase.'...

Nevertheless, I couldn't help but be amused with his pointed frankness.

We left amicably, him relived we were not thieving motherfuckers, and us relived to get out of the endless bloody rain.

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