19 June

Audlem have a group of volunteers who keep their area of the canal clean and tidy. Likewise the people are very proud of their village and area and it is a pleasure to visit.

Jim took a couple of books back to recycle them at the charity shop, and picked up another from Peter at Audlem Mill. Then we left and had four locks almost immediately. As we were leaving Audlem, we saw an old steam roller towing a trailer across the bridge over the canal. Unfortunately we were too slow to get a picture of it.

The weather was fine but very cloudy and there was a strong wind blowing around 20 mph, which made things quite cool. Jim was well rugged up on the tiller. After a few miles we came across Hack Green where there was a Secret bunker from the Cold War days. It was close to the canal so we went into the complex.

It was a large concrete building, spread over three floors, the bottom one being an underground shelter. It started life in 1941 but in the 50's and 60's had its main function as part of the national radar chain against nuclear weapons and the coordination centre in the event that the UK was bombed. It was used in various similar roles until the mid 1990's when it was finally decommissioned. It was interesting to see the military control and command systems. There was a black and white movie that reconstructed what could happen and it was pretty gruesome. They had a maximum of two and a half minutes warning at most, and estimated that half the UK population would have been lost within the first 12 months. The movie had many actors and Jim saw Peter Sellars for a few seconds.

We then went through a couple more locks and arrived at Nantwich. We moored and then Jim fought the mobile system trying to send the blog. Jim uploaded 30 pictures each of 2MB, only to lose them when the network failed, so he gave up.

We rested out of the wind and took things easy.

The Shroppie Fly pub from the canal 

Some nice painted items on the roof of a canal boat

Another marina full of boats.  

A boat called Leo

Waiting to go into a lock

We've seen a few cabin cruisers but this is the only one we've seen moving

Hack Cottage just before the secret bunker

A radar antenna from the 1960's,  with plastic owl on it to keep the other birds away. 

 

An antiaircraft gun that has a tree growing up through its axle.

The guard house.  Being outside the guards were obviously expendable.

A display of military radios

The Civil Defence got hand me downs.  The WS 62 radio on the right would have been pretty hopeless.

A large display of Russian equipment.
The typewrite at the bottom was their improved version of the German WW2 Enigma machine   

Jim used to work for Racal.  They would have supplied all sorts of electronic items in this bunker 

Hams are allowed to operate from the bunker on special events

In rural areas, signs like this are not uncommon.  Even close up, we couldn't read the sign

It's unusual for both types of emergency lock board shelters to be found in one place.