On Saturday I visited Greenham Common. Once an old military base and now turned into common land, and slowly being reclaimed by nature. The thing that makes this place special however is the remaining evidence of its past. One of the first things that captures your attention is the missile silos still on place, now fenced off previously contained nuclear warheads (several decades again the place was subject to protests by a collection of well meaning hippies, quite likely all vegetarians now). The land is generally very flat, and ordinarily dull, it it weren’t for the base remains sticking out of the ground reminding you at random intervals you’d be forgiven for thinking that you where actually in Milton Keynes.
Other features of note include the rusty old plane mock-up, once used by practicing fire fighters and also the control tower sticking out from the ground. There were also lots of dried up ponds all over the area.
When walking around it was fairly obvious that there once existed a fairly long runway, going from end to end. Getting from one end to the other then emerged as the personal challenge of the day. This was quickly sidelined when I got stomach grumbling hungry. Darting from side to side, being drawn to every single little landscape feature in the hunt for the perfect photo is not the most efficient forms of traveling in only one direction, I began to long for my bike.
I arrived fairly late in the afternoon (just after lunch) to a low sun in the sky, the weather was glorious and warm, and the sunlight was just right for taking photos, although slightly annoyingly it was so low to the ground, I could only take photos in one direction, with the sun directly behind me, any other angle would result in lots of camera flare which had the side effect of making all my photos look like they had been picked out of the latest sci-fi space film release.
Anyway, I’ve posted some of my favourites (I’m not sure some of them are good enough for posting here) to my news feed at;
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