Friday 23 December 2011

Atlantic Wall à Erdeven












We went to see a cargo ship that ran aground on a beach between Lorient and Quiberon yesterday. It's stuck fast and will have to be cut up in situ once the fuel oil has been drained from the tanks, hence the pipelines and cables. It's now been sectioned off but when I visited you could get within fifty metres or so, although that was quite far enough away for me, given the diesel fumes and the waves.

However, I also had a wander around the adjacent bits of the Atlantic Wall which included a couple of large bunkers on the beach and a whole network of command bunkers, tobruk stands and weapons pits in the dunes behind, including traces of the trenches that connected them together. One peculiar feature was the remains of what looked like black vulcanised rubber tiles on the floor of the beach bunker, which was a bit unexpected to say the least.

I'll have to have a look on Google Earth to, see what the layout is like from a birds eye viewpoint, as it was quite extensive and I couldn't cover all of it on foot. A couple of what looked like mortar bunkers had been blown up with sections of concrete lying all over the place but others were untouched. I suspect that the authorities had tried out a bit of bunker clearance after the war but realised it was a bit pointless, except for cutting away the steel shutters and embrasures for scrap?

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