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Goodbye 2025 – Photo Highlights From This Years Adventures
As 2025 draws to a close, it is time for me to dig deep through my journal entries and photos from another fantastic year exploring lost places. This year I had a wonderful summer, exploring abandoned places all over the UK as well as in Italy and Portugal. As autumn crept in, I managed several long-weekend wild camping and photography trips in Wales to close out the year.
I hope you enjoy this retrospective look at the highlights of 2025, including brand new and unseen behind-the-scenes photos.
Overview of my 2025 Urbex adventures
A summer trip to Italy
I kicked off the 2025 European adventures with a 10 day trip around Italy
- Visited an impressive 32 locations, driving 3200km.
- Explored three huge schools/colleges (collegios).
- Industrial relics. From pristine power plants to hydro plants and factories lost in the forest.
- Reclaimed by nature., An old school overgrown with ferns, and a spectacular verdant glasshouse
- A huge fortress-like prison, spending hours exploring the complex.
- A creepy dentist surgery, complete with rusty equipment.
More adventures exploring ruins of Portugal
Hot on the heels of the Italian tour, I enjoyed a 6-day road trip around Portugal.
- A small town clinic and surgery closed down many years ago, frozen in time and filled with curious treasures to photograph!
- Several car graveyards. One was a haphazard collection of old timers lost in the forest; the other was a collection in collapsing garages.
- A plethora of fascinating old houses and quintas (estates, usually related to wine-making).
- Lots of industrial ruins: a pristine control, old hydro plants, an immense textile factory and a charming paper mill.
- Finally visited an old classic sanatorium (always skipped on previous trips)
Two road trips around Ireland
I was lucky enough to make two trips over to Ireland this year.
- Time capsules! From dusty workshops and shuttered bars to small cottages frozen in the time (1970s & 1990s)
- Slowing down, and taking more close-up and detail photos
- Documenting Irish churches from large historic sites, to small collapsed ruins
- Two classics: Asylum X and The Borstal
- Amazing roadside finds – a 1960s Ford Zephyr, a collection of colourful ice cream vans, and a retro fire engine!
- Wild camping in the beautiful forests of Ireland, comfy in my cosy hammock
DAy trips and weekends exploring England, Scotland & Wales
- Delving into the collapsing remains of the UK pottery industry
- A sketchy roof climb into an Art Deco swimming pool
- Uncovering more stunning Welsh chapels, spread all over Wales
- Churches from a tabernacle made of wood and tin, to an old miners’ church lost in the forest of Wales
- A gorgeous minty green power plant control room that has been on my list to see for many years
- A revisit to a beautiful Art Deco synagogue, and an beautiful 19th-century ballroom
- A cautious adventure on a half-sunken Royal Navy minesweeper
- An abandoned coal mining museum, complete with replica mine workings (with creepy mannequins!)
- A collection of old British planes, including a huge Cold War-era bomber
- A large abandoned school with old science labs, auditorium and decaying 1950s sports hall
- Visited two abandoned Scottish “lunatic asylums”, dating back to the Victorian-era
- Explored some relics of the Scottish coal mining industry: a beautiful old substation and a rusty, dusty old boiler house
- A quick detour to visit a small but interesting 1950s waterworks
- An old signmaker, filled with old engineering and printing machines
- An exhilarating exploration of an underwater ballistics testing facility, which includes a massive testing tank
- A lucky exploration of a closed-down submarine museum
- A creepy abandoned Welsh dental clinic
- A last-minute visit to an old asylum morgue, a small but historically fascinating spot
- Two huge abandoned hospitals in Wales, both former mental health/psychiatric hospitals
- Finally visiting a certain abandoned Scottish school, third time lucky (hint: I was so pleased, the location made the cover of my 2026 Calendar!)
Appearing in my Beautiful Abandoned Places Calendars 2026!
Some of the locations and photographs featured on this blog also appear in my Beautiful Abandoned Places 2026 calendar, available for sale now.
My calendar only features photos captured this year, to celebrate an amazing 12 months of adventures.
You can find out more about my calendar, and order your own copy in my online shop.
My Analog photography adventures continue
Shooting a lot of film, amassing a huge developing backlog
For one reason or another, I haven’t been developing as much film this year. However, I have still been shooting a LOT of film this year. As the year draws to a close, I have 32 rolls of undeveloped film chilling in my freezer!
Shooting even more varieties of analogue film, posting more film reviews
This year I continued to explore different film stocks!
- I have added more photos to my Kodak Gold and Kodak ColorPlus collections
- I reviewed AgfaPhoto APX 400, the results of my photo session with some adorable plump seal pups
- I experimented with and reviewed Bones 35mm. This repurposed medical x-ray film is not for the faint of heart! It required several rounds of testing before I shot one of the Magnificent Seven London cemeteries.
Expanding my film camera collection
This year I picked up a few new (old) film cameras, to add to my growing collection!
- Belomo Chaika 2, USSR (Belarus) 1960s/1970s half-frame 35mm camera.
- GOMZ (Lomo) Sputnik. Medium Format (6×6) triple-lens reflex stereo camera, 1950s to 1970s in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).
- Kunik Petie. A tiny 16mm film camera, made in West Germany in the 1950s/1960s.
Love film photography? <3
You can check out more of my film photography in the Film & Vintage Lens area of my blog, where I share film stock reviews alongside photos I have taken. I have also added two film photography portfolios to my website, covering monochrome and colour photos.
Collection of Behind-the-Scenes photos from 2025
Celebrating New additions to my online shop
Postcards – Abandoned Places On 35mm Film
Hand-picked by me, from favourite film photos taken on my grandad’s Zenit-E.
Beautiful Abandoned Places 2026
Features 12 captivating photos from some of my favourite abandoned places I visited this year.
Casualties of 2025
We say goodbye to several locations this year, here are some notable casualties of 2025;
- Abandoned American Diner, England – Demolished
- Supersonic Wind Tunnel, England – One of the control rooms was demolished
- Cyclops Car Graveyard, England – Cleared
- Salle des Compresseurs, Belgium – Empty
Renovations, restorations and (possible) new chapters
2025 marked a year where some of my favourite locations saw the start of renovation/restoration;
- The Ark Synagogue, England – Possible renovation incoming
- Grande Palácio, Portugal – Renovation underway
- Villa del Cavaliere, Italy – Sold, what will happen next?
What do you think?
What photograph caught your eye the most? How did this location make you feel? Do you have a question? Let me know by leaving a comment!
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