Bulwell’s Ant Daykin has accumulated nearly thirty thousand followers by posting category-evading content on his YouTube channel: Trekking Exploration. Having spent days exploring derelict, industrial sites in-and-around the Peak District and abandoned corners of towns between Derby and Notts, there are few people as familiar with East Midlands industrial history as he is. We met Ant to chat about hiking, history and his feelings about our innate ‘right to roam’ in the country and town.
Ant Daykin isn’t just your typical urban explorer. While the label encompasses people who explore derelict spaces in-and-about cities and Ant, without a doubt, is an enthusiast for urban history, he spends far more time in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire countryside than in the city, investigating those strange, liminal spaces where industrial heritage and rural life collide.
“I’ve always had a fascination with canals and narrowboats,” he says, recounting the origins of his popular YouTube channel: Trekking Exploration. “While walking canals I found an abandoned railway and followed it through instinct. I ended up somewhere between Ilkeston and Derby. That led to exploring more places, like old tunnels, buildings, and Peak District reservoirs that went dry a few summers ago. I’m like a fisherman latching onto things with a rod, thinking ‘oh that sounds good’.”
On his channel, currently sporting 28,000 subscribers and nearly 400 videos, Ant intricately maps out the industrial heritage of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. From railways, to mines, to water towers, to mills, there are very few post-19th century historical tidbits, in-and-around the Peak District, that he hasn’t covered online.
You will eventually get a generation who won’t even know what a coal mine was, but I suppose that what I do keeps it alive in some form
Hiking, trekking, exploration, whichever word we prefer: they’re by no means unpopular hobbies. In November 2020, a quarter of Brits described themselves as hikers, probably a result of lockdown during which we got a renewed appreciation for getting into the great outdoors. Even in January 2024, there were 84 million uses of the ‘hiking’ hashtag on social media. Ant however sets himself apart by doing what many people probably wish they had the time to do: following his nose, taking as much time as he needs to investigate the landmarks he encounters, and weaving stories in video form about a Britain that’s fast fading into the annals of history.
“At the Ladybower reservoir I found three openings to tunnels in the hillside,” he says. “My friend that knows about Derbyshire history told me that they topped up Ladybower and the other Derwent reservoirs by pinching water out of rivers. One tunnel goes towards Castleton, the other towards Edale, both going under popular hills like Win Hill and Mam Tor, but nobody knew that they were there. There were railway tracks outside one, and nobody knew what they were for. I eventually figured out that they’d dug out these tunnels with little industrial trains that carried out the rubble. I went back with a metal detector and followed the route for about a half mile, and found all the rails buried under soil and grass.”
In an ideal world we’d all have the chance to make historical discoveries like this, but unfortunately most of our countryside and city history is barred from us. Still today, much of the discourse on hiking and trekking is centred on the public’s ‘right-to-roam’, which we aren’t always afforded. According to the ‘Right to Roam’ campaign group, the public have right-of-access to only 8% of the countryside, an issue that’s been discussed extensively in politics, and also in places like London where there’s been AGMs on an ‘urban-right-to-roam’, as cities get more densely populated.
“There’s a lot in Nottingham I’d like to see, but there’s just so much red tape nowadays,” says Ant. You can say to people, as nice as you like, 'I'll be half an hour’ but they just don’t want you doing it. My opinion is that if they don’t officially let you into these places, then they’re just encouraging others to force their way in. People are going to do it anyway.”
Ant, we can 100% affirm, is not one of those people. With as big a platform as he has, he resolves never to access anywhere that he’s not supposed to, or explore spaces in any way that draws close to illegality.
“I’m not going to go around breaking fences and windows, because you get backlash. I sometimes see people posting themselves online in places that they really shouldn’t be. On Facebook this morning I saw three lads walking around inside the recently defunct Ratcliffe Power Station. They were showing their faces and everything, and there were lots of comments saying ‘you really shouldn’t be in there.”
Until any legislation says otherwise, we’ll have to speculate at the history of off-limits, prohibited urban spaces. For Ant, they’re nice to think about all-the-same, as there’s always hidden history around us, like the many underground caves in Notts that we of the city don’t get to see.
“A lot of the old Broadmarsh area is still there, but covered up or blocked off,” Ant says.”Mansfield Road way there’s a couple of underground quarries that were turned into World War II air raid shelters. There’s a graffitied, stone wall that’s actually an entrance into an underground sand quarry.” As the adage goes, even though we think we know our home-city like the back of our hand, there’s always new things to discover.
Follow Ant at www.youtube.com/@TrekkingExploration
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