The Factory

A couple of days ago I read about The Factory in the Jönköping Facebook group. Nice, some 5/5 Urban Exploration (UE)...

The factory from the outside, almost magical...

The factory has been "dead" for about 20 years, and has been a widely talked about UE goal for cachers in northern europe. I had not heard about this before but reading the logs really made me wanna go here.
So, even though that this is something like 250 km south from there I live, at 6:30 am this Saturday I left Linköping to get to the rendez vous in Jönköping 8 am.  Only logged one simple cache on the way but that was just because I managed to take the wrong turn just before reaching the final destination.

The rest of the group walking into the area

Waiting for me there was 6 cachers from Jönköping. I got into the car of Beast, together with Ankarcrona, while the rest took the lead in the other car. We set of south, and just made a quick stop on the way, before reaching the industrial area where you can find the Factory.

Preparing to enter the factory building

We had prepared for the expected, with flash lights, head lights, boots and dressed for the occassion. Many brought cameras as there was lots of photo opportunities.

The chosen foot wear was OK for most part. Some carried sneakers, while I carred knee high rubber boots.  It turned out that my choice was not enough ;-) as I at one time tested the deep at one place and too late realized that it was too deep. But that was at the very end so my time with wet feet (as usual...) was a short one.

We managed to enter the factory without much problem. Inside it was a heaven for urban explorers with lots of sceneries like the one to the left.

Our mission was to try to locate certain places in the building. As we followed the tracks we entered deeper and deeper into the factory.

One have to tread carefully at places at it seemed like it could fall down at any time. The picture to the right was actually a bit up in the air.






Someone commented that this would have made an excellent locale to record a horror movie, and that it was. We did find a couple of inscriptions like the ones you see on the pictures here. At least the spelling does indicate that it is not the brightest ones that has put the texts there, and that is at least something...

Splendid view

Oh... are we going up there?

After a while we had to climb up to the rough of the factory. That was the part that I had most problems with before going here but it actually turned out to be an OK climb, so everyone (even the ones more afraid of heights than me) did manage to get up to the top.

Try not to get to close...

Having made the top we did continue our search in the rest of the building, find some more nice places.

Then we continued in a a nearby building finding more places. Here we do think that there was remains of some other steps of this "multi" that might have been cancelled, which was a pitty as this was another wonderful building. So we did enjoy going through this as well.

 We finally found the final position, and looked around for a while, before locating the cache. Great joy in the group and another 5/5 completed.

This was a great experience that I recommend anyone to test. Taking the right precautions, be careful enough and this wont be any problems. Expect to be here for at least 2 hours.

                                The Scrapyard

After completing the factory the ones in the first car had plans for our next stop. A 1/1 scrapyard like 40 km to the East. Huh? Sounded a bit fishy... And yes, there is actually a geoCache here, namely Kyrkö mosse scrapyard

The entrance

The story about this place is that here lived a guy that bought old cars, and then sell parts to enthusiasts around the country. One day he stopped doing that but the remaints of the cars stayed. And I do not expect anyone to remove these...

As we reached the place it actually turned out to be a real tourist magnet, with visitors from both Denmark and Germany. They even had a guided tour once a day!

 The area do contain a lot of cars, tractors, bikes and even busses.

There are a lot of paths you can follow as you look around.









So, this is another place that is worth visiting.

Blekinge and Skåne

The two caches above are both in the state of Kronoberg. I had actually not cached this far south in Sweden. But we were very close to the two southmost states, Bleking and Skåne.  As we also needed to eat something at this point we decided to go for Olofström, the closest larger city.

After taking some easy caches, and having a quick sausage dinner, it was time for the group to split into two, as the other car wanted to go back as quickly as possible while the car I travelled (with Ankarcrona and Beast) wanted to do some more caching. So we drove different ways, although it turned out that both headed via Skåne...

Our target was to go to the Diabas Earthcache. Diabas is an excellent material to use for statues, like the ones we found at the Asterix and Obelix cache.

One thing I did notice when entering Skåne was that the cache description was not just in Swedish and English, but in Danish as well!

After doing that it was time to head home. We did log a couple along the way so the time run out. I had planned to be in Linköping before midnight, but around 2 am in the morning we did reach Jönköping again. So, I stepped into my car and drove home, and around 4 am I got home, very tired. Almost fell asleep several times during the trip back home.

Final words

To sum it up it was a great trip. Both The Factory and the scrapyard was well spent time, and Skåne seem to be a very nice area for geoCaching. I will surely return to do more caching there, and I will have to go to Denmark some day.

Three new states for me, that is good for the statistics.

Another 5/5, this time an UE cache. Great! Deserves its favorite points.

And an earthCache as a bonus.

Thanks everyone involved for a great trip!