DERELICT SUNDAY - A GREAT FIND - BUT WHAT IS IT?

The service at Church this morning went very well and as usual, we went out afterwards looking for dereliction.  We have our favourite places, and were happy just to meander around the Wiltshire countryside looking for more.

We were going along a road we had never travelled before when we came upon this old and derelict scout car parked on the grass verge outside someone’s house.  I had no idea what it was, but Mr. HCB reckoned it was probably a World War II reconnaissance vehicle but how it came to be parked outside a house in the middle of the Wiltshire countryside, is anyone’s guess!  It certainly hadn’t moved for some time so was perfect for the Derelict Sunday challenge.

I did a search of the internet, but couldn’t find out anything about this particular vehicle and there was no-one around to ask - somehow it didn’t seem right to knock someone’s front door just after lunchtime on a Sunday!  Perhaps it might be worth going back at some other time to find out the story behind this.  I have put a photo of the front of the vehicle in as an extra, showing part of the engine.

However, I found out from a Google search that “Scout cars are either unarmed or lightly armed for self-defence and do not carry large calibre weapons systems.  This differentiates them from armoured cars carrying heavier armament or wheeled infantry fighting vehicles, both of which may also be used for reconnaissance.  In 1940, the British Army defined a "scout car" as an armoured car for observation, intelligence-gathering and other elements of passive reconnaissance.”

We were quite near to Brinkworth, so popped into The Walled Garden Nursery and bought a few more plants to go into our border.  Whilst there, I wandered over to the pond and found quite a few waterlilies open - see extra for one beauty - and I also spotted a dragonfly, so have put that in too.

“In every walk with nature,
     one receives far more
          than he seeks.”
John Muir