Rendlesham Forest, November 2022

Every year for the past twelve our original 'team' of Paul, Jason, Linda and I aim to spend a weekend at Woodbridge, so we can spend time exploring the forest and its well-known locations. This was not possible during the various 'lockdown' periods of course: we had to cancel last year's visit at the last minute.

This year, however, we met at the East Gate car park (you have to pay these days!) for our annual reunion. Joining us were Jason's lovely children Rosie and Thomas (who have attended many of the previous walks, talks and night-time excursions!) as well as Rosie's partner Tom.

After a long walk around the airfield perimeter fence (when we noticed that the bomb-proof hangar doors have been removed!) and a visit to the East Gate, we adjourned to Orford for lunch at the beach cafe. Seemed strange to not see the lighthouse....

 

 

After checking into our hotel in Woodbridge (run very much along the lines of Fawlty Towers!) we enjoyed a fabulous supper at the Wilford Bridge restaurant - highly recommended! We then returned to the East Gate and began our nocturnal ramble along Track 10, visiting the site of the 1980 landing and the now-removed picnic table. Disappointing that the vegetation at the fence here is now so high you can no longer look across Capel Green to the farmhouse and Orford.

As usual we were armed with FLIR cameras, IR nightscopes and all the usual paraphernalia: we only use torches for archive photography or to check camera settings and so on. And, as usual, we obtained some very interesting images, including an incredible 'flying rod' captured by Rosie...