Post Storm Arwen; Cycle around Hedderwick Plantation, JMCP

 

Photo credit Rob McDougal Photography....

It is a week today We woke up to the devestaion of Storm Arwen and some people in remote areas still do not have electricity reconnected...

 

My Dad always talked about a big storm in the 1960`s when he was a Telephone engineer after he came out of the Army. Trees were flattened and electric power and telephones were down for weeks...

I think Storm Arwen is the big storm in my lifetime as I have never seen anything like this...

The above picture was taken by local photographer Rob McDougal who filmed G and I  cycling near the coast for part of a couple of visit Scotland promotional films that are on YouTube. Look him up on Facebook and you can watch a short Drone film he has made flying over the devastation of flattened trees in the Hedderwick Plantation at John Muir Country Park, Dunbar, East Lothian, and being our local backyard we and many others have been blown away by the damage done...

Cycling around and seeing the devastation was mind blowing... We have both never seen anything like this... was pretty speechless and dry mouthed as we looked at the damage....

It is like something out an apocalypse film...

There is so much history to this area in John Muir Country Park... 

 

The Hedderwick Plantation of Scots Pine trees was planted in the 1950s and the clearing area to the west of the wood having been a sand quarry after WW2 until the 1960s- the sand being exported to Fife to a glass works...,  

Previously to this in WW2 The area was the West Barnes Ranges, with a rifle range and mortar/grenade range and coastal anti invasion defences were built as it was a prime invasion area, with anti glider poles, machine gun pill boxes, and mined beaches.  

Previously to this during WW1 there was a rifle  range and what is still today traces of what are now regarded as the longest remains of WW1 trenches in Western Europe where men were trained in trench warfare before then went off to the carage of the western trenches... 

Army cavalry stationed in Dunbar Barracks also exercised horses on a race coarse where East Links Family Park is now located going back to the Napoleonic Wars...And before that a golf course was here... 

All this history is documented and on maps and fascinating... more changes of use has probably happened in this area of East Lothian than anywhere else in the County...

And now it seems the area is about to undergo another unforeseen change...

Wonder what awaits the next development of the area?...

Here is a film I shot cycling around the outside of the fallen woods...

Song is `An Ending (Ascent)` by Brian Eno

More soon...