I wake early around 5am, excited about the day ahead. I’ve booked a ticket to visit the Orford Ness National Nature Reserve, home to remnants of buildings used at the height of the Cold War by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment for development work on the atomic bomb.
A pleasant five mile cross-country walk, passing the ever-present piglet farms, takes me to Orford, which is as beautiful as all the other Suffolk villages I’ve passed through. There’s plenty of time before my ferry crossing to the 10 mile long shingle spit, so I enjoy a cooked breakfast at the Jolly Sailor.
The skipper of the tiny ferry tells us that the National Trust use the term “curated decay” for their management of the site — what a lovely phrase. It looks as though you can walk along the shingle spit from Aldeburgh, but there’s a restricted MOD area with unexploded bombs buried in the shingle.
There are amazing panoramic views from the roof of the Bomb Ballistics tower, built in 1933 as the centre of operations for the bombing range. It naturally reminds me of Dungeness. I love these wild, bleak, windswept places.
The vast shingle spit extends in all directions, only broken by the occasional building on the horizon.
The Black Beacon was built to house experimental radio apparatus. To the outside world it was presented as a marine navigation beacon, when it was really a homing beacon for military aircraft.
The Artangel collective have a few exhibits on the reserve. Ilya Kaminsky’s I See a Silence combines haunting poetry and prose. It was originally experienced on headsets while walking round the site, which would have been perfect, but is now an aural experience in the Black Beacon. I enjoy it so much that I take one of the free books. Unfortunately, simply reading the words does not have the same impact as hearing someone speak them so beautifully.
Alice Channer’s sculpture Lethality and Vulnerability is more my thing. A tangle of aluminium bramble-like growths that have taken over an abandoned shelter. Nature reclaiming the land or an escaped virus?
Lab 1, completed in 1956, was the first of six atomic weapons test cells, used for for both mechanical and vibration testing and for drop tests
Unfortunately, the inside of the lab is fenced off, so you can only peer through the wire mesh. I love the contrast between new green life and decaying concrete and rusting metal.
Sadly, it’s not possible to get any closer to the other labs. There is a special tour that takes you into the restricted areas, but even that only appears to get you closer to the outside of the buildings.
At the north end of the spit, there are the remnants of a large Anglo-American radar project, code-named Cobra Mist. It’s goal was to monitor activity behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and is now forming a rather different function, being home to Radio Caroline.
The number of visitors to the reserve are strictly monitored via the use of tokens. I ask what they would do if there was one token left at the end of the day, indicating that someone was still on the spit. This has never happened and I get a strange look when I say I could see the attraction of camping overnight, being able to take photos in golden hour. I’m probably on a watch-list now.
Time for food and a beer in Orford. A biker rally has taken over the pub, although there is plenty of space.
Walking back to my campsite, a passing creature of the earth completes a beautiful, haunting day.
Walk distance: 13 miles.
Total distance: 2,119 miles.
Ah so you went official and paid rather than try to walk along the shingle. Glad you got to visit, I really enjoyed it and a fascinating place. I was lucky that the lighthouse still stood then, sadly it’s gone now.
Yes, I booked ahead to make sure I could visit, as it was the highlight of the trip. Shame the lighthouse has gone.
I love big radio stations. Think I’ll pay a visit!
Definitely your sort of place. You can’t get up close though…unless you sneak through the dunes 😉