Thursday 8 October 2009

Alderney

An island three and a half miles by one and a half and so many fortifications:Napoleonic, Victorian and German WWII, all jammed on top of each other and around each other. Houses turned into defence fortifications then back into houses. Bunkers built on granite forts and camouflaged to look like stone and great angry-looking concrete slits knocked through the Victorian walls. Winding trenches breached by brambles. Anti-tank walls deluged under banks of sand. A very, very long breakwater with rusting railway tracks disappearing off the end. Organisation Todt on overdrive and the misery of the 'slave-workers' embedded in the wood-shuttered cement. The sense of watching and waiting, of being watched by countless, dank, dark gun embrasures, is immense and so often it is the sense of staring out over the sea to something invisible or perhaps about to appear through the fog.
All this and some stunning seafood too.

No comments:

Post a Comment


Persian textile pattern detail on House.