Great British Picnics 2 .. in VERY unusual places.

Funny how you go months without a picnic and then end up on three in a week... and one in a VERY unusual location.

Who would have thought I would have a picnic underneath a old nuclear testing building? OK - not as dramatic or dangerous as it sounds but still pretty amazing.

Both picnics were at National Trust sites. The first, a more traditional NT property - The Vyne in Hampshire. Beautiful 16th century house, chapel and gardens, lovely cakes in the tea room etc etc.

The second was at Orford Ness in Suffolk as part of an organised trip with
Paddy Heazel, a volunteer who has carried out in-depth research into the military history of the site, as our guide. He has written a book on the subject which the National Trust will be publishing eventually.

No tea room on "the island" ...the secret base for defence experiments. Fresh water and toilets are available on the site but you get there on a NT boat (a five minute journey from Orford Quay)to be conveyed around the Ness on a large tractor drawn trailer, with our own packed lunches ready for a picnic in the vicinity of the famous pagodas.

To have such a knowledgeable guide, and one that could bring history alive with stories of the young "boffins" who worked hard and played hard developing the means for Britain to win two wars, was a real treat.

I knew the site was where radar was developed but didn't know that every bomb was tested there, or that in 1915 the Central Flying School's Experimental Flying Section developed aerial warfare there. In the Second World war it was bomb ballistics that needed the privacy of Orford Ness, and postwar it was the site of secret work on The Atomic Bomb, testing to ensure that none were accidentally triggered whilst in transport by extremes of temperature,vibrations etc.

We also heard how parachutes were developed on Orford Ness, and how it was the need for wartime pilots to be able to operate one-handed as they flew their planes that led to the easy-to-use seat buckles we take for granted on holiday flights nowadays.

How did it stay so secret for so long? A co-operative local population, individual work done on a "need-to-know" basis and the improbability of such a remote location being the site for work that needed ease of transport. It was only when the USA military began to get involved in work there during the Cold War that there was a security fence installed with a hgh number of armed guards to keep people out.


Since they took over in 1993, the NT has demolished many of the decaying buildings and the runways have been removed but they have resisted the temptation to "tidy up" the 16km shingle spit. Bomb craters and many of the old test buildings remain and debrey is still scattered around. Warning signs remind visitors to stay on the marked trails because of the possibility of old ordnance making its way to the surface of the shingle.

Whatever your views on nuclear war, Orford Ness is part of our history and must be one of the National Trusts most unusual acquisitions. The bird life is amazing (our party constantly had their eyes to their binoculars), but with an expert guide the place comes alive in your imagination and you get to go into some of the locked miltary buildings. Remember, there's no tearoom..it just wouldn't look right!