Poland 2023 – The First Polish Tour

Highlights From This Trip

• 9 Days
• 2000 miles driven
• 25 Locations Photographed
• ~350 photographs
• Palaces, churches, hospitals, morgues and more!
• Not quite as many palaces as expected, but there was a giant strawberry!

Welcome to my first road trip blog of 2023! So far this year I have been pottering around England and Wales, very much waiting for summer and longer days. This tour marks my first urbex trip to Poland, which I accept is probably many years overdue!

Day one – ticking off a bucket list location

Sometimes it isn’t a spectacular location or grand architecture that gets me most excited. I also enjoy the wildcards, the chance to photograph something unusual or bizarre that I have never seen before.

I have had my eye on one such location for a while, located in Poland so now is my chance. Even better, it is the first location on the first day of the road trip. My anticipation builds as I drive closer, and as I get out of the car and walk up to it I have the biggest smile on my face. I walk through a hole in the fence and within a few seconds I am face-to-face with my goal. A giant, abandoned strawberry. Remnants of a fruit farm that closed down, I guess this was part advert part tourist attraction. The strawberry is looking very weather worn, with some serious post-apocalyptic vibes going on.

Classic Polish Palaces (…well, one)

The first thing that went onto the route map, were all the classic abandoned Polish palaces. Most of these were scraped from an old map I prepared in 2016, for a trip that sadly never happened. I guess things have changed, seemingly much of this within recent months!

Starting with the positives, I did enjoy a long explore of a spectacular palace. Probably, one of the best in terms of diversity of rooms and interesting photograph potential.

Several palaces I tried, were freshly boarded. Unfortunate, but it happens. Another was not possible until the summer, but given the high price the guardian requires to open the doors perhaps I will let this one go. Lastly, one rather ruinous palace with a piano was skipped as it wouldn’t be attractive to shoot in the torrential rain. Maybe another trip at another time will yield a plethora of palace photos, with a little more luck (and possibly a ladder!).

If not palaces, then what?

The trip certainly was not a failure, despite being a lot less palace-y than I originally expected. I explored some nice industry, including a wonderful blue cooling tower. Keeping with the blue theme there was also a large blue swimming pool that was one of the highlights for me.

I enjoyed some nice medical locations; a hospital and several small morgues. Additionally I explored a laboratory, rural school, locomotive graveyard and a cinema. As always, there are always a few churches on the route. In this case, one very large and interesting one made entirely our of wood!

A lesson I learnt long ago, was to always have many locations researched and added to the map. Backups in case the main locations are inaccessible, are essential. Other things along the route that can fill a few hours on the more unlucky days. I did make good use of my additional locations on this trip, and some were surprisingly fun to shoot!

Making time to shoot more 35mm film

As my film journey progresses, I have decided I would like to test out as lots of different 35mm film stocks. My experimental side has been awoken! I have an idea to create a blog series discussing these, comparing and contrasting their use for abandoned places photography. For now, I plan to use a different film stock for each trip. For my Poland adventure my Zenit E is loaded with Ilford HP5 black and white film. I can’t wait to see how they turn out!

More behind-the-scenes photos from my Poland 2023 Road Trip

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this road trip blog! Here are the rest of the behind-the-scenes snaps and preview photos from this trip, see you next time <3.