Well I am back home, knackered but satisfied.   I have had a little time to think some more about Orford Ness.  My last post was actually sent stand next to the only nuclear testing facility open to the public, the sinister Lab No 1.   The place is truly strange in both a good and very sinister way.  The good is the landscape of the ness.  It is open, flat and devoid of any useful reference points.  You cannot judge distances when you are on the ness.  Lab No 1 seems next to the landing point but it is almost 2 km walk.  This is very weird.

This disorientation is not helped by the wide bland skies when we were there.  There was plenty of detail with the sky but yet it seemed to hold no information – as though this had been drawn out of.

Then there is the sinister.  The whole ness is a huge weapon development sight.  Beyond the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) buildings there are innumerable craters dotted around the place.  Some small, others not so.  These provide a strange vignette to slowly decaying AWRE buildings.   Whilst there was never any nuclear materials on the Ness the delivery systems contained high explosives and so the buildings were designed  to contain any explosion should they occur whilst the testing took place.  The result is a series of weird looking buildings which again only reinforces the sinister feeling of the place.

The site of the ill fated Cobra Mist radar station only adds to the air of sinister malevolence.  When you add the nearby Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, ‘Britain’s Roswell’ then this a very strange and slightly disturbing part of the world.

However,  this being England things aren’t quite what they seem.   Whilst the Ness was this super secret testing site Orford is only 500 metres across the River Ore and any testing that went on must have been in plain site of anyone with even the most rudimentary binoculars.  America has Groome lake, an area intensely guarded and we have Orford Ness right next to a small quayside and pretty medieval town.   I think I prefer Orford any time.
 

Simon Marchini LRPS

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