Did you know that there is a sea wall in the heart of Surrey? Probably, not. But there is and Mrs Grumble quite often goes for a walk past it. It's on Hankley Common which is Ministry of Defence land. You can walk there but occasionally you get a bit of a shock when you suddenly notice soldiers with blackened faces spying on you from the bushes. Sometimes Mrs Grumble's dog flushes them out. Dogs are good at that. The army could put them to good use. Perhaps they do. There haven't been that many soldiers recently. It seems they are all busy elsewhere.
In the Lion's Mouth, hidden amongst some silver birches, is the Atlantic wall. Dr Grumble used to wonder what this structure was. Then, in 2003, a plaque appeared.
It turns out that the wall was built by Canadian troops in preparation for the D-Day landings. Below is a snap, taken this morning, of one end of the wall. It's difficult to show the scale and length of the structure in a photograph.
The idea, of course, was to test methods of breaching the wall. You can still see the holes they made.
You can read more about Surrey's sea wall here.
