Today was the Guernsey Alzheimer's Tower to Tower walk, this is a charity that is very close to my heart as they gave my Dad and me a huge amount of support. so every year Chris and I help with the registration, and are always wowed by the generosity of Guernsey people.
There are 15 Martello or loophole towers along our coast (all numbered),
to protect us from those dastardly French!
It started at Tower 12 on Vazon, and our walkers headed along the coast, dogs in tow past 5 more towers (it should have been 6, but number 8 got blown by the Germans) and finishing at Tower 5 called Nid de l'Herbe, no idea what that means think I should look it up sometime!
It was looking very pretty, all decked out in massive bunting, not sure what the original soldiers would have made of that!
It was a ladder climb to the first floor and then if you were brave enough a ladder straight up to the roof
It was very windy, and suffer a little from vertigo, but knew the view would be amazing, so gritting my teeth I climbed up, and out through the hatch, and knelt for a moment before sticking my head above the parapet. Too windy!!!! So my camera went up instead.
wow, it was worth it, this is looking west out over L'Ancresse
Then East out towards Herm and Jethou
Then with very wobbly legs I climbed down and had a much needed strong black sweet coffee with the volunteers waiting to cheer the walkers home.
Then back to our car the other side of the tower feeling very guilty we hadn't walked, and paused for a moment by this hulking lump of German concrete and wondered what on earth it was?
Well when I got home I looked it up, and it turns out its part of a stone crusher that crushed and graded granite for use with in the island fortifications, which I think brings us full circle from the 18th century loophole towers to the 20th century occupation.
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