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A visit to Steepholm.
Sep. 23rd, 2013 10:42 pmIn which we discover the answers to several long-standing questions -
'Can you fall asleep on the concrete apron of an experimental gun platform?'
'If all your mates pitched down a cliff for some pole-dancing, would you follow?'
'What's Weston-super-mud like before the bogs open?'
(Yes, yes and shut)
Yesterday seemed to go on for quite a long time. I'd set the alarm for five, since it would take me a while to get steam up at that time and walking out of the house without trousers or spare film or something would just be a bit poor. How pleased I was, however, to be woken at two by a broken computer. I crashed out on the sofa, but was still in a proper state of shamble by the time Will banged on the door at six.
We found some more of the party when we arrived at the quayside. We also found that the council bogs in Weston don't open that early. Instead we surprised some poor chap who was minding a nearby hotel.
The boat trip out to the island was more of a blast. Think of something a bit like an 80s re-enactment of PBR Steetgang, but faster and with more tweed. I think I was trying to hum 'Ride of the valkyries' as Steepholm stopped being a patch of different coloured mist and turned into a thing with trees and pebbles and a ruined cottage leaning out of the cliff-face.
Next to the ruined cottage, which had been an inn, was a smashed-open cable termination point. Later, someone mentioned The Deep Ones, and it all slotted together in my head. I mean, if you were going to try and fail to get nameless horrors on your side when a proper mechanised war broke out, that would be the sort of landscape left behind when it all went expectedly wrong.
Steepholm is mostly brambles, seabirds, rotting military hardware, deer and a barracks-turned-visitor-centre with indoor lighting plant and outside bog.
It's completely brilliant.
We collectively pottered about for a bit, finding the remains of a smallholding; a mysterious shed with the script from a numbers station nailed to the wall, which itself was handy for the sort of collapsible aerial/flagpole not mentioned in the Famous Five books due to a lack of technical rigor; the trig point and most of the gun emplacements. All of which seemed to have the original Victorian cannons lying around nearby.
I started to fall asleep during the picnic lunch, so took myself off to the far pointy end of the island where an experimental gun platform had been destroyed by experimental shelling, leaving thumping great lumps of nickel-steel armour and concrete slabs lying about at angles apparently designed for something between 40 and 120 winks. I took the 120 option, then pottered back to the barracks just in time for the sun to appear over a yardarm somewhere. Post beer and tales from the others about the 'pole-dancing platform at the bottom of the cliff' it seemed like a splendid idea to go and find it for myself. Along the bottom path and turn right out into space where the sign says 'Dangerous'. It was indeed a bit steep, but there was indeed a searchlight platform held up by an acro-jack.
When I pottered back, I took it into my head to ask one of the volunteers about the lighting plant and where the water comes from. It transpires that the water comes from the roof of the barracks and is piped into a thumping great reservoir behind the building, where it comes out of the taps brown and really isn't fit to drink. The lighting plant is a Lister diesel and he wasn't the chap to speak to about it but the fellow digging out the culvert at the back had supplied the thing and would be jolly pleased to talk about it. The bloke digging the culvert seemed to be about the age of my grandfather and had run an agricultural engineers in Wiltshire - 'You from the Cotswolds? Ah. Foreigner.' I was treated to a long explanation of the history of the engine itself (built in the 40s), the backup engine, the relative merits of Ferguson over Fordson tractors and the fascination of the SubBrit group. At that point I was mostly convinced I was likely still asleep over by the experimental battery and this was actually a voyage through my own head.
It turns out that you can fall asleep on the pebbled beach underneath the ruined inn while the dusk is having a right old gather. The trip back was faster and more like being an extra in Miami Vice.
An interesting (to me anyway) thing, of the many interesting things about the place, was someone going 'It's another mendip, you know' as I was staring in the direction of Brean Down and Brent Knoll. One of the first trips out of Bristol while still trying to leave London involved beetling off to Blackdown with Dingbat to look for the Starfish site and what was allegedly a 'Z battery'. We found the firepits and control bunker for the Starfish site, but didn't find the remains of the Z battery because we didn't really know what we were looking for. It turns out that if you find a circle of big rusty bolts sticking out of a concrete slab, that's what the remains of the Z battery rocket launcher looks like, and there are several to choose from on the island.
In my half-asleep rambles on the motorway back into the C21st, I alleged that Steepholm wasn't of any particular era because instead of the successive timezones removing most traces (apart from those which are decorative and/or worth money) of their predecessors, it was all piled in together and you made the best of it leaning on a Georgian cannon outside of a Victorian barracks while updating Facebook about the Roman wall incorporated into Napoleonic fortifications the far side of the outside bogs.
'Can you fall asleep on the concrete apron of an experimental gun platform?'
'If all your mates pitched down a cliff for some pole-dancing, would you follow?'
'What's Weston-super-mud like before the bogs open?'
(Yes, yes and shut)
Yesterday seemed to go on for quite a long time. I'd set the alarm for five, since it would take me a while to get steam up at that time and walking out of the house without trousers or spare film or something would just be a bit poor. How pleased I was, however, to be woken at two by a broken computer. I crashed out on the sofa, but was still in a proper state of shamble by the time Will banged on the door at six.
We found some more of the party when we arrived at the quayside. We also found that the council bogs in Weston don't open that early. Instead we surprised some poor chap who was minding a nearby hotel.
The boat trip out to the island was more of a blast. Think of something a bit like an 80s re-enactment of PBR Steetgang, but faster and with more tweed. I think I was trying to hum 'Ride of the valkyries' as Steepholm stopped being a patch of different coloured mist and turned into a thing with trees and pebbles and a ruined cottage leaning out of the cliff-face.
Next to the ruined cottage, which had been an inn, was a smashed-open cable termination point. Later, someone mentioned The Deep Ones, and it all slotted together in my head. I mean, if you were going to try and fail to get nameless horrors on your side when a proper mechanised war broke out, that would be the sort of landscape left behind when it all went expectedly wrong.
Steepholm is mostly brambles, seabirds, rotting military hardware, deer and a barracks-turned-visitor-centre with indoor lighting plant and outside bog.
It's completely brilliant.
We collectively pottered about for a bit, finding the remains of a smallholding; a mysterious shed with the script from a numbers station nailed to the wall, which itself was handy for the sort of collapsible aerial/flagpole not mentioned in the Famous Five books due to a lack of technical rigor; the trig point and most of the gun emplacements. All of which seemed to have the original Victorian cannons lying around nearby.
I started to fall asleep during the picnic lunch, so took myself off to the far pointy end of the island where an experimental gun platform had been destroyed by experimental shelling, leaving thumping great lumps of nickel-steel armour and concrete slabs lying about at angles apparently designed for something between 40 and 120 winks. I took the 120 option, then pottered back to the barracks just in time for the sun to appear over a yardarm somewhere. Post beer and tales from the others about the 'pole-dancing platform at the bottom of the cliff' it seemed like a splendid idea to go and find it for myself. Along the bottom path and turn right out into space where the sign says 'Dangerous'. It was indeed a bit steep, but there was indeed a searchlight platform held up by an acro-jack.
When I pottered back, I took it into my head to ask one of the volunteers about the lighting plant and where the water comes from. It transpires that the water comes from the roof of the barracks and is piped into a thumping great reservoir behind the building, where it comes out of the taps brown and really isn't fit to drink. The lighting plant is a Lister diesel and he wasn't the chap to speak to about it but the fellow digging out the culvert at the back had supplied the thing and would be jolly pleased to talk about it. The bloke digging the culvert seemed to be about the age of my grandfather and had run an agricultural engineers in Wiltshire - 'You from the Cotswolds? Ah. Foreigner.' I was treated to a long explanation of the history of the engine itself (built in the 40s), the backup engine, the relative merits of Ferguson over Fordson tractors and the fascination of the SubBrit group. At that point I was mostly convinced I was likely still asleep over by the experimental battery and this was actually a voyage through my own head.
It turns out that you can fall asleep on the pebbled beach underneath the ruined inn while the dusk is having a right old gather. The trip back was faster and more like being an extra in Miami Vice.
An interesting (to me anyway) thing, of the many interesting things about the place, was someone going 'It's another mendip, you know' as I was staring in the direction of Brean Down and Brent Knoll. One of the first trips out of Bristol while still trying to leave London involved beetling off to Blackdown with Dingbat to look for the Starfish site and what was allegedly a 'Z battery'. We found the firepits and control bunker for the Starfish site, but didn't find the remains of the Z battery because we didn't really know what we were looking for. It turns out that if you find a circle of big rusty bolts sticking out of a concrete slab, that's what the remains of the Z battery rocket launcher looks like, and there are several to choose from on the island.
In my half-asleep rambles on the motorway back into the C21st, I alleged that Steepholm wasn't of any particular era because instead of the successive timezones removing most traces (apart from those which are decorative and/or worth money) of their predecessors, it was all piled in together and you made the best of it leaning on a Georgian cannon outside of a Victorian barracks while updating Facebook about the Roman wall incorporated into Napoleonic fortifications the far side of the outside bogs.
