Secret Nuclear Bunker

I was flicking through Penguin's "Bollocks to Alton Towers" this
morning and came across
<http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/articles/bollockstoaltontowers/nuclearbunker.html>
which is the Secret Nuclear Bunker in Kelvedon.

Their webiste (www.secretnuclearbunker.com) suggests they're open 7
days a week. It's only a 12 mile detour (north-east M25) on my
journey home from Derby on the Sunday after EoSM so I plan to take a
tour (£6) while I'm near.

Has anyone here been, and is it an interesting distraction?

 

I went there the other day Nick.

I've been 4 times now and it's an amazing place to visit. The first I went
was best, because it had only just opened. Now, the guy seems to have filled
it up with a helluva a lot junk!
Well worth a visit though, just amazing to think that it was built in almost
*total* secrecy at the time.
I lived nearby, as did a number of my friends, and although I was probably a
little too young to have known it being built, I couldn't find anybody that
did.

Mind the ride from the road to the bunker though, it turns into a gravely
sloping car park.

HTH.
--
Greybeard

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Ooh. I take it there's nowhere to store ones tank bag, helmet and
jacket?

 

I would have been reluctant to spend an eternity with some of the ugly
munters in that place, if the mannequins on the Admin level are anything
to go by.

Nuclear War - Yes Please!

 

Surely the Vimmin vould haff to be of a most stimulating nature, ja?

Oh, sorry, that's mineshafts.

 

I'd like to know just how they built it. Mining technique or excavation
and backfilling?

 

Yep, I've been.

Well worth it, and a very interesting distraction!

 

Yes, been once. It's worthy of at least one visit. Every room i went in the
phone rang, so eventually i answered
it, an irate voice said "Would you PLEASE stop touching everything" I was
only being inquisitive.

It's well signposted in the area to "Secret Nuclear Bunker" which doesn't
seem to make it that much of a secret anymore.

Brian Day

 

The latter. There's a display at the site explaining the construction
method. It's mostly an artificial hill, just a fucking big one.

 

It's certainly not a bad way to kill a few hours.

I've been there a couple of times, most recently about 2 years ago. It's
a privately owned site, furnished on the cheap, so don't expect
world-class facilities. It's very much a "this furniture looks like the
kind of shit you might have had somewhere 30 years ago" affair, with a
load of early 80s computer hardware thrown in for good measure (and an
awful quality loop of Protect and Survive on an ancient telly). But if
you can see through the poor exhibits, the facility itself (and some of
the less desperate decoration) is pretty good, and it's not really very
expensive.
It may have been tarted up a bit in the last couple of years, but I
really doubt it.

As to the approach, it used to be a gravel (and rock and halfbrick)
strewn track leading to a sloping gravel carpark, but they had at least
tarmac'ed the track when I was last there.

Bizarrely, unless they've changed it, you pay on the way out by putting
your money in a tub by the exit. There's a notice nearby saying they
have CCTV everywhere so they know who's trying to skip paying. Ho ho.

 

Yes. Very cool

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Hoyuss; I can see how that would be really secret.

 

Surprising as it seems, apparently it really was. The mast and
everything, people just didn't think it was odd.

Very odd looking 'farmhouse' when you get close enough.

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Is a gravely sloping car park steeper than a gravelly sloping car park?
You probably can't find a gravely sloping gravelly car park as all the
gravel would slide to the bottom end.

 

It's rather good in a pick up and flick through way. I'm going to go
to the bee museum next week.

You just can't help yourself can you?

snip.

 

I used to pass a similar 'bungalow' on a plot of land somewhere in the
Central Belt in Scotland. Oddly, there was a mast at the back of it the
same height as that one in Essex. The land it sat on, about 5 acres, had
that earth-worked appearance as if it had been dug up and re-laid, kind
of like landscaping gone a bit wrong. Oh, and the whole plot was
surrounded by a fairly typical MoD fence.

I always suspected that was an underground bolt hole for the murine
cunts in the Scottish Office or their equally pusillanimous counterparts
from local government.

 

In uk.rec.motorcycles, BGN belched forth and ejected the following:

That's what gets me about secret nuclear bunkers, there's fucking
signposts up for them so not exactly secret.

 

Well, it's easy to tell. Launch a nuclear strike and see if the mast
folds flat to avoid the blast.....

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
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Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

There is one in Fife though I suspect there are more that we don't know
about? , went to visit it last month, fascinating, There are parts that are
still 'secret!' and it is run by a government orginisation, So I wonder how
long if push came to shove it would get back into a usable state to protect
our esteem members of the Scottish government.

Des

 

I went there a few(!) years ago with an old girlfriend. Every so often
there are mock announcements over the tannoy system. At one point she
asked me "are these announcements real?", the last one having been "1
megaton airburst blast over St Albans. Heavy casualties" or somesuch.

It worries me that she is now a doctor.

Mark