Hidden Targets

Some of the bushes in this scene are mostly metal: old tracked vehicles used as "dry" targets (simulated) but which have been overgrown with the brambles or other bushes near them.

Lulworth ranges are spooky places, in some ways.  I've been to plenty of ranges, air weaponry and ground weaponry, in the UK, Canada, Germany and the USA, but there is something strange about the English countryside made isolated by the exclusive use of military training.

And even stranger was the feeling in the old Tyneham village, deserted since late 1943, when all the properties were requisitioned by the Army for use in preparing for D-Day the following June.  The villagers seem have gone with little protest, perhaps because they were promised that they would return to their homes when the war was over.  But they weren't allowed to and the Government compulsorily purchased the whole are in 1952.  Extra shows the structures of the labourers' cottages, now without roofs.

In the other Extra, a panorama of a beautiful cove and beach, Worbarrow, about a mile from Tyneham and open to the public, like the village, only on certain days – when the ranges are not being used.

The histories are poignant.  It's an affecting place.