Thanks to its incredible geological diversity, Britain has always attracted filmmakers. And we’re not just talking period dramas here. In fact, plenty of iconic science fiction films have made great use of our signature landscapes, from eerie moors to futuristic cityscapes. This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with many of the UK’s wilder places. After all, head up to the Outer Hebrides and you’ll find untrodden beaches studded with rocks so old, they look like the surface of the moon. Meanwhile, in North Wales, abandoned mines and quarries lie high in the hills, beneath craggy peaks and ridgelines. In Eastern England, you can find disused air bases doubling as spaceports, bleak ex-industrial landscapes transformed into prison planets, and ancient woodlands so untouched they look like the pristine jungle of an alien planet. These tangible, real-life locations can ground a film, lending any set a sense of reality that simply can’t be done in the studio.
What’s more important is that these places are relatively easy to visit and often hidden in plain sight. Here are a few of our favourite alien planets across the UK, which make a great objective for a day hike or a little urbex expedition.
This quirky British sci-fi film based on Douglas Adams’ classic books stayed true to its roots, using locations around the UK for both comedic and alien settings. While the bulk of shooting took place in Shepperton Studios, other scenes were filmed in Cambridgeshire and most notably at Trefil Quarry in Y Bannau Brycheiniog or the Brecon Beacons, Wales.
Fleeing their ship The Heart of Gold, Zaphod, Arthur, Ford and Marvin crash-land their scarlet red escape pod onto an unknown planet whilst trying to pursue Tricia McMillan (or Trillian to use her space name). At first, Zaphod believes it to be the much-fabled Magrathea. But it soon transpires that they are in fact on the Vogsphere, the planet of the much-reviled Vogons, described by Douglas Adams as “…one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy – not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.”
To recreate the Vogons’ home planet, locations manager David Broder chose Trefil Quarry, which he felt looked like a small-scale Grand Canyon. Feeling a quarry was a little clichéd, director Garth Jennings was initially resistant to using Trefil as the alien planet, but it was said he came around as soon as he saw photos of the site. At an altitude of 2,000ft, it not only remains barren and alien-like, but also has wide-reaching views over Pen y Fan and the surrounding countryside.
Limestone would once have been quarried from the site and used in nearby industry. Actually, there is still a working quarry here, so be sure to stay away from the active site. If you plan to visit, search for Trefil Quarry on Google Maps – this is the newer working quarry. To reach the older, abandoned one, you can drive, but do bear in mind this is a heavily potholed private track, with quarry lorries rushing past. If you feel your vehicle insurance (or suspension) won’t allow you to make the journey, park in the nearby village and either cycle or walk the remaining three miles to the site.
General Leia’s resistance base on the planet D’Qar in the 2015 Star Wars film, The Force Awakens was actually based on the former RAF station at Greenham Common, near Newbury, Berkshire. Through the use of CGI and large-scale models, Greenham was transformed as its grass-covered former missile silos doubled as hangars for X-wing fighters and the Millennium Falcon.
Of course, the site is most closely associated with the Cold War, since from the late 1940s onwards, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) of the United States Air Force (USAF) was partly based here. Home to American fighters, bombers and cruise missiles, at any point planes could have been scrambled to attack the Soviet Union, launching an all-out nuclear strike that could have conceivably led to the annihilation of life on Earth. Countering this was an all-female peace movement, numbering 50,000 activists at their peak. The women made their peace camp around the outer perimeter fence in one of the largest and longest-running protests ever seen in the UK.
Although the missile silos used in the film are behind a security fence, it is still possible to walk relatively close to them. However, the best views are from high in the control tower, which now serves as a café and museum. Much of the land here has reverted back to a wilder state, and Greenham has become one of the largest inland heathlands in the UK. Home to ground-nesting birds, small mammals and rare butterflies, it is a far cry from its destructive past.
Director JJ Abrams spent a lot of time filming in the UK for his 2015 box-office smash, also shooting at Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean. This is a magically preserved ancient woodland comprising large, lush green moss-covered rocks, exposed roots, twisted trees and a forest floor of ferns. You can navigate this 14-acre site through a maze of steps, paths and winding rustic wooden walkways, taking you to small clearings and deep ravines that were all used as a backdrop to key scenes in the film.
The woods serve as the lush green forest world of Takodana, where Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, has her woodland lightsabre battle with Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren. The makers of the film, wanting to create a believable, immersive environment, did little to alter the landscape, and visiting the woods it is relatively easy to make out where some of the scenes were shot. Puzzlewood is a paid site with varying opening hours throughout the year. Visit their website for details.
Stanley Kubrick filmed most of this groundbreaking movie in the iconic British studios of Shepperton and Pinewood, using elaborate sets to simulate spaceship, lunar and deep space environments. If it were shot today, Kubrick would have no doubt used special effects instead. But back in the late 1960s, he used small planes flying over the area near Loch Airigh on the Isle of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides, to evoke the surface of Jupiter. He coloured the film with tinted lenses, but as the local rock comprised an ancient stone called anorthosite, similar in composition to lunar rocks, it already had an otherworldly quality to it.
Anorthosite is nothing like the more familiar and commonly seen granite, limestone and chalk landscapes found elsewhere in Britain. This makes the area truly unique and quite unlike anywhere else. Walking or driving through the landscape is really special, as a single-track road weaves through a region of bare rock and moss. The loch is one of the few discernible landmarks in this barren corner of the island – a visit there is quite unforgettable.
Back in 1991 when this sci-fi sequence was filmed, Blast Beach, near Seaham, County Durham was an industrial wasteland. From the Victorian age onwards, four local mines had regularly dumped colliery waste onto the beach, allowing it to wash out to sea. It was estimated that more than 2.5 million tonnes were dumped onto the beach every year the mines were active. The result was a toxic wasteland stretching more than four miles out to sea.
Fortunately, between 1997 and 2002, a group of organisations including the local council and the National Trust joined together to transform the beach. They radically changed it from a dark toxic desert to a wildlife haven. Today, rare wildflowers attract butterflies, and sandpipers hop along its rocky shores. It’s a far cry from the bleak lead mining facility of ‘C-Max’, the prison planet of Fiorina 161 on which Ripley crash-lands in the film.
Based on the first novel in Jeff Van der Meer's The Southern Reach Trilogy, this visually stunning sci-fi flick investigates the mysterious habitat of The Shimmer, which has arrived on Earth, expanding in Area X, a classified zone somewhere in southeastern USA. A team of four volunteer military researchers undertake an expedition to venture into it. Inside the sealed off-zone, strange phenomena distort the laws of physics, re-composing animal and plant life. But the parts of the movie filmed in a wet marshland, looking like the swamps of Florida, are actually Windsor Great Park, near London. More specifically, the film crew shot these sequences in an area known as Wood Pond.
Van der Meer initially had a specific ecosystem in mind for Area X: St. Marks Wildlife Refuge in northern Florida. But having spoken to other filmmakers, producer Andrew McDonald was fully aware of the difficulty in filming in swampland. Besides the obvious negatives of high heat and humidity, McDonald said he learned that: “when you’re shooting at something so dense, all you’re getting is a green curtain so you can’t really see beyond anything.” With that in mind, Windsor Great Park became a much more practical substitute for the Florida swamp.
Dave Hamilton is a photographer, forager and explorer of historic sites and natural places. A father of two boys, he writes for BBC Wildlife, Countryfile, and Walk magazines. He is also the author of six books, including the titles 'Wild Ruins' and 'Wild Ruins BC'..
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