I popped over to the BMSS show on Saturday to pick up a few things including a tub of bits for the Blog from Adrian, two days after a brilliant parcel from Chris Smith dropped-in, so lots in the queue, and I've been bumped into looking out all the Motorcycle stuff for a round-up or two!
Coming on the heels of the dragons teeth post, and on the way back from Reading, I thought I'd stop on Hazeley Heath and look at the tracks they dug out of the undergrowth/bog a few years ago, we used to play around there as kids, but it's changed a great deal, and memory failed me at one point, but they are subsequent posts, this is the tracks!
Apparently the above is Valentine Tank track, the area was used to test towing cables by the REME, previously probably the Ordnance Corps, or an offshoot of the Royal Engineers MVEE testing facilities at Deepcut/Chobham, up the road (A3), or the vehicle testing site at Rushmoor, across the way, between Fleet and Aldershot?
While this hasn't been ID'd, but I think it's a Vickers Medium Mk.1's tracks from the 1920's, also used on early Mk.2's before the ones with the plates that have a double-cross cut in them, was used. The site was in use for testing, since before the First World War, so interwar track is quite possible. It's so heavy and so rusted, I couldn't lift it to see the underside of even one link.
But the tracks are very thin, they almost look imaginary, however, up close, have both age and casting marks, so a small carrier or one of the late 1930's cruisers? Obviously, the diamond-plate fabricated 'hull' is a modern fancy.
3 comments:
I cannot say I ever encountered something like this during my travels.
It's because we're a small, belligerent country Jan, this stuff is literally everywhere! To a lesser extent that's true for most of Europe, in your part of the world it tends to be miles inside fenced-off areas of desert or badland, miles from prying dog-walker's or passing drivers' cameras!
H
Nice try Timothee Lambert and Edvin Berg, but we don't do spam here.
H
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