Helen Stanley, Artist and TV presenter

My Favourite Detour

Jul 27

Written By Nik Berg

You’ve seen her on Goblin Works Garage and Motor Pickers, working on custom builds and picking the perfect car for punters. Away from the cameras Helen Stanley is fan of the weird and wonderful and her Favourite Detour took her on a 400-mile round trip to an abandoned theme park.

“It’s not just the car, not just the road. It’s everything that makes the road trip.”

— Helen Stanley

“My best friend Jessica and I do weird things. I like the paranormal and I like ghost stories and like abandoned buildings and things like that. We found out about an abandoned theme park. It was called Camelot and, at the time, it had been abandoned for a couple of years and was on my absolute hit list for abandoned places to go and explore.

So we jumped in her Ford Fiesta and we drove up there, investigated, and drove back in one day. It was quite a long day driving from Hertford to near Preston, but it was one of the most exciting road trips we've done because we were so nervous about getting there.

How were we going to get in? We didn’t want to break in, we wanted to get through an original existing opening somewhere. We had a fantastic time taking pictures. We got chased by security, we met a load of skateboarders and it was just a brilliant day.

Then we drove back in the Fiesta with all this adrenaline. Jessica has been my best friend since school and we always used to drive around together. The fact that she was driving a Fiesta reminded me of us being young. There were no special roads, it was just the whole experience. And that's what I think about when I think about road trips. It's not just the car, not just the road. It's everything that makes the road trip.

When you're a lifelong petrolhead you really enjoy those moments. When I first started driving all I wanted was freedom and music in my car and that's the feeling we had when we were doing that road trip and that feeling will never leave me because it was the first proper freedom I had as a teenager and it still feels the same now.”