Nearly 2 decades ago, I trawled the internet to find a forgotten, unrestored Maginot Line Fort… When we were next in France, I searched unsuccessfully for a few, but finally hit gold…. Alas, no torch or rope, and alone, I had to give up any ideas of exploring inside! Well, I did step inside just to say I had got in…. but it was quite a sight when we caught the first glimpse of it in the forest clearing:
More Traces of the Past over at Paula’s here.
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Love this!
Thanks, Anna!
Fascinating, Sue.
janet
It was fantastic to find a relic from the past, which was exactly that
I love that sort of thing.
😀
Thank you, Sue. The unrestored fort really evokes the history. I would expect such a place to be restored and turned into a war museum and a visitor centre.
Some of them are….but this one is now buried under mounds of earth apparently….the French Military didn’t want people accessing it, I think
You were quite the intrepid lady back in the day, Sue 🙂 Hope you’re having a good Sunday.
I haven’t completely given up yet, Jo!
Having a lazy day today, off to Wisley again tomorrow…. How about you?
Tee hee 🙂 I thought that would get you! One of my busy, tedious washing/ironing/cooking Sundays alas. Son home and Dad here for dinner, and the weather was much too nice for that. Got to get cracking now or there won’t be a Monday walk. Enjoy Wisley! Wish I was coming along.
Red rag and bull, eh? Anyways, I wish you were coming to Wisley!
We’d have a chuckle 🙂
We would, for sure!
That must have been exciting, Sue. Shame it is now buried, and future generations won’t get the chance to see it.
Best wishes, Pete.
Well, you couldn’t see it in the past unless you knew where to look, and were prepared to take the risk of being on military land…..
They built them Hell for Stout back then, didn’t they? Love the photo and the story.
Ω
Hell for stout is a new one on me, Allan!
It’s an old term that I learned back in the ’70s when I worked on mines in Western Colorado. The backstory is that if you leave a miner alone in a room with an anvil and a glass hammer and come back in a hour you will have a broken anvil. Thus, everything in a mine is built “Hell for Stout.”
Ω
Wow – the feeling when coming across this!
Yep!
So this one will be reclaimed by the earth in time. Interesting Sue, I had to google it of course. I wouldn’t want to go inside.
You presumably googled Maginot Line …. There are a number of them that you can visit, but they are too clinical….that’s why I would have liked to see inside this one, but not something one would do alone, or without lights and rope etc!
I wonder what series this building could tell.
I love the B&W for this image.
Isadora 😎
http://isadoraartandphotography.com/2016/09/18/quilting-bee-traces-of-the-past/
Actually, not too many stories as the Germans circumvented the Maginot Line, going through Belgium instead, so virtually one of the forts saw any fighting…..
That is so very interesting, Sue. Thank you for posting it for me in your comment. (I think you guessed that I was typing stories and my spell check changed it to series – ahhh -progress). Great photo … 😎
I am always finding the predictive text comes up with weird ideas….
Wonderful image, Sue. I bet you were just longing to be able to explore a bit. 🙂
Oh, absolutely!
Another great photo, Queen of Atmosphere, and explorer. Interesting thought-line started too: once places like this are Ma available to the public easily they lose ambience and past reality. There was a school of thought that said Warsaw afte WW2 should be left as rubble and a perpetual reminder.
Well put…”they lose ambience and past reality” – exactly.when I was inside one restored fort, tried to go “off piste”, and soon got called back!
Can you correct Ma to made???
No, but you can! I guessed that was what you meant… And my reply sent too soon, I think there are errors in that.
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My kind of place…
😀😀
Hard to imagine this was once the French pride and strongest defense—except it wasn’t of course. Now it looks so pastoral and quite a contrast to its brutal history. A fantastic image, Sue.
Thanks, Otto! It was quite an experience…
what a fantastic image and a poignant piece of history!
Thanks, Hannah!
Amazing! How beautiful!
Beautiful is not a word I would have thought of for this! But it was a great find….
Talk about solid and built to last. Beauty in it’s determination to survive. Almost like a residence of magic.
Built to last, indeed