There were a number of vehicles parked about, and a train shunting nearby, and some machinery humming away, so I expected at any minute to be called out to and sent packing. At lollygagging pace I circled the perimeter, getting gradually closer, before finally dropping my kickstand and wandering inside.
The place was deserted.
There was something magical about this location. First, it was huge. Second, it was vacant and unfinished, which made it feel like a brand-new ruin. The concrete floors were covered in the thinnest layer of rainwater. Wind ripped through the wooden walkways a dozen storeys above, causing tatters of plastic to flutter and flap.
Third, these silos were so smooth and simple -- big concrete cylinders -- that they felt more like alien or druidic monuments than serviceable structures. They were somehow at once reminiscent of cathedrals and of a streamlined video-game world.
I wondered vaguely about the differing orders in which they were being constructed -- some had columns in place for the funnel, but no roof, others had a roof but no columns -- but I didn't speculate for long. If I had had a tour guide, I would have listened attentively, but my enjoyment of these spaces had almost nothing to do with intellectual curiosity. The fun, as always for me, I suppose, was in trespassing, and in being inside a big strange thing I'd never seen before up close.
After the cylindrical ones, I ducked inside the tall cuboid one, half looking for a stairwell. (I was not about to climb sixteen flights of external scaffolding stairs in a high wind.) But these structures are not built to be climbed. In fact, the tall one didn't look like it was built to be entered by humans at all. In any case, its flooded gravel floor, littered with detritus from the construction going on sixteen storeys overhead, revealed that it had not been entered for some time.
I guess I speculated a little; but I learned nothing.
I got back on my bike and, grateful, gleeful, returned the way I'd come.
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