Orfordness is a lonely place.
As an avid fan of science fiction, history and landscape, Orfordness would be the perfect place as a foundation for the year ahead. Thoughts of Wilhelm Sasnal's paintings of Moscice and memories of Dungeness became expectation as the coach hurtled toward the Suffolk town.
The town of Orford held a rural silence, there was no buzz of cars on the roadside and ambling folk watched as the metallic monster which we had been sat in, slide through the labyrinthine streets. Leaving the coach we were met by a tour guide, explaining more about the Shingle spit he took us toward the boat, we walked through the town against the sea winds. We were drawing closer, the strong winds had no problem passing over the small buildings and with that they drew an awful howl. To get to the Orfordness we would still have to cross the river Ore, splitting into two groups we got onto the tublike boat, which swayed uneasily as one by one we got on. Departing across the Ore our vessel still moved with the tide of the hungry brown void churning and frothing against the painted black hull of our vessel.
Beyond that the landmass and port rose above us, soon to put the small boats journey to an end.
While we waited for the second group to make the journey across I looked out across the landscape, though mostly flat scrubland, it was adorned by small buildings, Cold War relics and testing bunkers blended into the scenery as sandy hills. A long tall fence separated the scrubland like a rusted iron necklace and seagulls disturbed the landscape like suspended white pearls.
And even as part of the group I felt lonely, isolated. The weather had been cloudy all day but at Orfordness the fog had begun to move in as soon as we stepped off the boat and before the long the mainland had begun to disappear, a greyed silhouette taking its place, the spit becoming an island and the ambient sounds familiar to us had changed to the crashing of the waves. We were guided up to a cabin further into the "island" from which we would later leave in a tourist variety truck 'n trailer, but we were encouraged into the cabin to see its educational display. The building was decorated with overhead photographs from the 60's of the area, endangered animals who inhabit Orfordness and infograhics of examples of the nuclear missiles and the payloads which had been tested here, but as we stood in the last room in the cabin, itself not much warmer than the world outside, we saw another of the site's Cold War relics sitting in front of us, in a dumbing, dreadful silence was a nuclear bomb, separated by a rope. From the silence and bustling of the slowly filling room, those moving and adjusting to see the relic, came the tour guide's gruff voice, which, after a decent throat clear, resounded against the ceiling.
'I wouldn't worry, its deactivated, has no payload. Though when it did it would have been more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki'.