I'm in no rush to get there. Taking in new Suffolk scenery from the car seems already enough of a treat after weeks in Cambridge, but mostly I want to pretend I'm becoming a Suffolk local by getting there without a map, which I suspect will result in my getting lost. So a rush would be pointless. I follow the signs to Hollesley, the village just before Shingle Street, and Bawdsey, the village after, since Shingle Street is too small to be on any signpost. On the way, a Nissen hut assures me I'm entering the land of WWII defence detritus, but then things start to become confusing.
As I near Hollesley, the signs seem to give options only to different parts of Hollesley Bay prison. I try to follow my nose towards the sea, but keep ending up confronted with 'no entry' commands. Still there is not a peep of Shingle Street. Kafka's Castle floats past my imagination and I wonder if I will make it. But this whole area was strung with road-blocks marking out the off-limits Defence Area in the war. The boundedness of the prison fits right in! I greet the signs with relish, and pull up next to the prison in awe at its size and barbed wire.
Hollesley suddenly releases me and the winding, enclosed, tree-lined roads give way to an expanse of flat land stretching to a strip of yellow ochre and a sail gliding past in the distance. A pillbox peeps out from its camouflage at the side of the road.
At Shingle Street now, I find the single row of houses, fronts to the sea, backs to a narrow road and fields. There is a gap! In fact there are two gaps. Neither of them seem to say very much about their origins. But this shingle seems to stretch for miles, empty except for sea cabbage, and at the end of the row I think I can pick out the hulk of a Martello tower. I want to walk, to the tower and into the emptiness, and the bouncing bomb and Lifeboat Inn slip away.
The Martello is in the grounds of someone's house. A black labrador sitting beneath it silently watches me skirt the fence that keeps me out, and round the other side, a red, curvy children's slide at its base tells me that if I want to play games with imagining myself into an invasion scare, this is not the place. Past it though, I can see three more, each half a mile apart along the gently curving shore. Four towers, all within sight! I hadn't realised they would be quite so close. At the second tower, there seems to be a pillbox perched on top. Spikes jut out from its roof.
Fifty feet away, another pillbox is sunk into the side of a bank, at the start of a procession of anti-tank cubes towards the sea.
The next Martello has a swooping glass addition to its roof, some scaffolding up one side and a jeep outside. What an incredible place to have made a home.
Finally I'm bearing down upon the last tower, and things start to come to a climax. Already my muttered incantation numerating my finds has been fueling my excitement. Two Martellos, two pillboxes... two Martellos, three pillboxes, one line of anti-tank cubes...
The patch of coast where sits the last tower is called East Lane, Bawdsey, and here I find the sea lapping through the openings of a pillbox, a huge concrete gun battery, a tall observation tower and another pillbox, all within a stone's throw of one another. I have been walking in these deserted expansive surroundings under a hot sun and a strong wind for some time now, and all my attention is on my military mission. Behavioural inhibitions have disappeared, and scampering up to, creeping round, peering into, tramping past and making gleeful exclamations at these buildings has become my new normal.
Five pillboxes, four Martellos, one line of anti-tank cubes, one observation post, and one gun battery. This has been a good day.
