OK – show me your pictures of bikes and abandoned military installations!

Rules:

1. Must have a bike in the picture.
2. Must have an abandoned military installation.
3. That’s enough rules.

This is the giant concrete block on Mt Umunum above San Jose, California.

It was built during the 1950s as part of a hugely expensive system to detect incoming Soviet nuclear bombers.

Unfortunately the Soviets switched to ICBMs which it couldn’t detect.

It was reopened as a state park last year; it’s a long ride to the top (it’s at ~1000m above sea level) but then an epic swooping ride back down to the main road.

My strava time is about double or maybe even more of the KoM. There are some properly fast people around here.

Brennan Torpedo Launch out of Cliffe Fort on the Thames,Kent.

a bird in a searchlight station from WW2

The Yarmalik complex on the hills above Urumqi in NW China. Built in the 1960s during tension between Russia and China, it’s a maze of abandoned tunnels and gun emplacements, accessed either through the slots of a pillbox or down a long flight of stairs beneath foxholes. There’s only one photo of the bike, in a big tunnel for vehicles, but I used to ride up there on a regular basis to get above the smog and follow random tracks around and down the contours.

Do abandoned military vehicles count?

Hamming it up by one of the bunkers on the local abandoned WW2 airfield

not quite a military installation but definitely something ‘military’…

Also not quite what you expect to find in the middle of the Essex countryside – its a
Dassault Mystere fighter jet from the late 50’s (was part of a planned museum of aircraft but is now rotting away..)

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2dK6Qt6]Grounded (3)[/url] by jon bawden, on Flickr

Abandoned NATO base above Finale Ligure

Nice pic Clubby, that looks like it’s the old APC at Barry Buddon? I have a few pics of bike taken in that spot.

MTB’s on an MBT.

Going back a few more years….

Ah, Grosmont Castle -one of my favourites…

Experimental WW2 tank dug up in Denbies Vineyard outside Dorking

https://www.flickr.com/photos/185751601@N08/shares/81168h

Tallboy at Brixham Battery, Devon

World War II Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery, Castle Hill, Huddersfield

More here – https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/world-war-ii-heavy-anti-aircraft-battery-stirley-knoll-yorkshire-february-2019.116784/

Stirley Knoll is pretty interesting to wander around, although I remember a lot of slurry. My Grandad talks about it having telegraph poles as ‘guns’ and it not being used as anti-aircraft but more a decoy. Reading the 28 days later link suggests this was the case at the back end of the war.

Croatian Pill-Box…

Forward Operating Base that was used for training purposes for Afghan etc………

Remains of MacBeth’s castle in Dingwall (hardly the military bit though, it’s the doo cot)

Berryhead fort, Brixham

another great photo thread…

Half Moon Bay Melbourne the resting ground of HMVS/HMAS Cerberus dating from 1870 and scuttled as a breakwater in 1926….and a fine coffee stop

Built in Jarrow possibly the earliest warship with rotating turrets also ballast tanks so could sail low in the water

350 year old Cockham Wood Fort,or what’s left of it – on the river Medway at Upnor earlier today.

Definitely spoilt for choice around that bit of Kent – used to ride my Raleigh Winner 5sp racer out to Cliffe Fort as a kid, and used to play hide and seek in the old bottle kilns nearby (which we used to call military silos back then).  Never did go along that bit of the Saxon Shore Way though that’s only accessible when the tide’s out.

Shornemead Fort today.Standing guard over the Thames from 1870……not so much now.