COME SAID THE BIRD

So we went for a walk in Harwich, where the ‘Secret Gardens of Harwich’ were open and in some sense ‘walkable.’

 

It so happens that the Nicholson horticultural bookshelf contains three books with ‘secret garden’ in the title - The Secret Gardens of Hollywood – but honey ALL gardens are secret in Hollywood; The Secret Gardens of East Anglia – at least some of which have open days, and one book simply called Secret Gardens, which contains at least one garden I’ve walked in. I know there are plenty of other ‘secret garden’ books.

The weekend walk in Harwich consisted mostly of strolling from one small domestic garden to another – private rather than secret I’d have said - but it was possible to clock up a mile or two on the streets.  None of the gardens was large and some were very small, so that once inside visitors shuffled rather than walked.  It was fine, though I can’t imagine Iain Sinclair much less Baudelaire, doing this kind of thing.

 

There is something strange but very appealing about finding yourself in other people’s garden, in their personal space as it were. Obviously you’re not trespassing because they’ve opened their garden to the public, revealed their secrets, but nevertheless there is some mild sense of intrusion. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want a bunch of strangers traipsing around my own garden, though I’m equally sure that not many would want to, not even for charity.

 

Every garden had something of interest

 

But the best, if you asked me, was the sunken garden at Quayside court, attached to a block of flats rather than a house.  It had a slight Alice in Wonderland theme.

Afterwards as went back to the car, you couldn’t say we’d had ‘a good walk’ however defined, but the day had got very hot by then and we were knackered from all the mooching about; since mooching can at least as exhausting as actually walking.

 

Of course there are things in Harwich that aren’t secret and aren’t gardens but are still interesting, especially to wanderers like me.  Hell, I even found a Thomasson:

 

ART WALKS (THOUGH SOMETIMES IT STAYS RIGHT WHERE IT IS)

 It’s good to see art when you’re walking.

 

At least I think it is.

 

Recently in Essex we had one of those art trails, you know the kind of thing.   In this case people (possibly artists) decorated octopus models, and placed them around the county. The scheme was called Octopus Ahoy and it had some connection with the 400^th anniversary of the Mayflower’s sailing from Harwich.

 

The octopi were were all over the place.  The ones I saw were at Colchester Station, in Liverpool Street in London, and this one by the Walls in Manningtree. Mondrian would be thrilled, right?

 

And then later the octopi were auctioned off for charity, generally bought by businesses, and I gather they raised a substantial amount of money, which can't be bad.

 

I was walking in Harwich the other day and I saw this pair that currently live outside a pub called The Pier. (Google Maps photo).

 

But walking further around the sea wall I found this bad boy octopus made out of rubbish.  Somehow it was more telling and appealing and (and I always hesitate to use the word) ‘authentic’ than any of the fancier, artier ones. 

 

Walking further around Harwich revealed other examples of marine art.  This one possibly by Banksy (seems we're not really sure, but at least it's safe under Perspex).

 

And there was also this fishy mural. Not too arty.  Not aiming too high.  I liked it.

 

 

WALKING IN BUNKERS

Of course I don’t actually walk IN bunkers.  I walk to and from bunkers, or past bunkers, and occasionally I go into one one, but many of them are too small to stand up in, let alone walk in.  And I admit that I'm using the term loosely, some of the things I call bunkers are no doubt actually pillboxes and observation posts, along other things, but then, I’m a layman.

This one, which is I think the most extraordinary bunker I’ve ever seen, was somewhere near San Diego on the Pacific Coast, though nobody was allowed in.

There is no shortage of bunkers and such along that coastline.  This is part of a series just north of San Francisco, and you could poke around there to your heart’s content: 

There’s a great pleasure in going for a walk and suddenly coming across a bunker when you least expect it, like this one by a recreation ground in Saxmundham.

This one is near Walton-on-the-Naze:

This one I did go inside this one – as had others before me – hence the phallic graffiti.

And here’s one that’s local to me, by the river Stour, in Essex, well dug into the earth, located between Manningtree and Cattawade.  

The council just sent somebody just cut all the tall weeds around it so you can walk down and peer in through the gun holes, or embrasures, though I couldn’t see much of anything in there. And you could go inside if you really wanted to, but you’d have to crawl through broken glass and who knows what else:

And last weekend in Hackney Wick, which is generally ‘street art central’ there was this rather well decorated one.  

And I did wonder for a moment whether decoration this was in some way ‘a bad thing’ but actually it reinforced the idea of how surprisingly (not completely) untouched so many of the similar structures are.  Why is that? Respect for wartime ‘monuments’? Maybe, though it seems unlikely.

But if you really want to bunker down, you could do worse that head for Harwich, in general.  

And specifically for the Beacon Hill Fort with shelters, gun emplacements, underground magazines, petrol and oil stores, and some things called spigot mortars.  Paul Virilio would have had a field day, as did I.

And if you just wanted to walk, there’s always the Squirrel Trail.

Our hero amid the bunker ruins: