When a secret bunker is not so secret

One thing you definitely do not expect to see when cruising the canals is to find a sign for a secret bunker. But that is exactly what I found this week at Hack Green.

I have previously visited a “secret” bunker near St Andrews in Scotland so it was not entirely new to me, but the chance to explore from the canal was too good to miss, and we moored up.

I was born in 1964 and grew up at the height of the Cold War. This would have been the centre for organising the UK midlands if there had been a nuclear war. It just looks like a small farm building, but below ground there are extensive rooms that would have coordinated civil defence activities.

I confess I found the visit fascinating but also very sobering. In the 1950s and 60s we came very close to disaster and it could happen again. In one of the rooms they were showing a film called “War Game” about what the aftermath of a nuclear war would have been like, It was horrific.

Back at the boat that afternoon, travelling through our beautiful countryside I was glad I had visited the secret bunker, but more glad that it had never been needed.