A stroll into the dunes

After a morning spent helping plant out the summer bedding plants in the village's communal flower tubs, pots and beds, I went for a stroll among the sand dunes. Summer must have arrived at last, as the Northern Marsh Orchids Dactylorhiza purpurella were coming into flower.


This one was part of a small colony lying amongst a pile of rusting iron scaffolding poles. They formed part of a high wall of interlocked poles. some kilometres in length, that was hurriedly erected in 1940 as part of the beach defences built in anticipation of an imminent and unwelcome visit by Nazi Germany. The extra photograph shows just two of the hundreds of iron anchoring rods that were driven 10 feet into the sand so as to anchor the wall to the ground. It was a less tranquil place in those days and it is always in the back of my mind that, at the end of the war, they failed to find all of the anti-tank mines that had been laid! This one  is said to have been found as late as December 2012!