Radar and More

I guess a trip to an old Radar Station isn't everybody's idea of a good day out, but it suited me. Neatishead started as a radar establishment back in the early days of the war and the museum reflects this.

Although the guided tour is optional, in practice you can't really visit without doing it. It takes you through three specific phases, the Battle of Britain, the later wartime period then the cold war. You're then left to wander around the other parts of the museum including a section on RAF Coltishall.

For a volunteer-run organisation (there is one paid administrator/curator) it was well staffed, many of the people having worked there or on similar things elsewhere. As it happens we were joined on our tour by the current patron and chairman of the trustees, a former senior RAF officer. He was able to add his own bit of history to the story as he was being guided on a training run by staff at Neatishead when it went off-air due to a fire in 1966. 3 civilian firemen lost their lives that day and the control had to be moved back from the underground bunker to the WW2 control room for several years.

I had a bit of a chat with one of their ex-RAF IT people, we worked on similar systems in the 1980s, and I can also recommend their cafe. After lunch (a decent baked potato) I decided to visit Happisburgh, really for the sake of it. I've got a few photos of the light house and yet more wartime defences (a couple of pillboxes). Looking at the pictures it's frightening just how much land has been lost there in a relatively short period. The only defences now are a stone breakwater that's protecting the ramp down to the beach, even that's currently being repositioned due to further erosion. I know the experts now reckon it's not worth trying to protect individual areas of the coast as it just moved the problem elsewhere, I can see it won't be that many years until the lighthouse and other buildings will be lost or will have to be moved as they did with Belle Tout.