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3
June 2003
Time to revisit Rendlesham for another long walk…
I
parked in the Visitor Centre cap park, and then set off down the
track away from the car park, and which goes past that ‘crater’ area
that we noted a few years back – its changed a bit, with a few more
trees fallen, and with more fern and other undergrowth starting to
encroach. A related anecdote on this came from a recent
speaker at the Oxfordshire Aviation Group's meeting - Nick Baker.
Nick was a former RAF pilot who was involved at the sharp end of
ejector seat development in this country. In his first
ejection in anger, he was flying his Meteor Mk2 over east Anglia,
when it went into a characteristic unrecoverable stall. Nick
tried to eject, but struggled to release the canopy - in those days
the canopy release was not automatic when the pilot activated the
ejection seat itself. When he finally released the canopy, the
sudden onrush of air turbulence over the cockpit stopped Nick from
getting his hands up to the ejector release blind. Nick says
he managed to eject "with the ground outside the windshield".
Nick landed heavily and with considerable injuries at Butley, while
his Meteor made a hole in Rendlesham Forest... Sadly Nick
wasn't sure exactly where his plane hit the ground, but we do know
that at one time there was definitely a 'Meteor crater' in
Rendlesham Forest!
 I’d
turned right up past the outlying cottage, and towards the path by
the perimeter fence with the ‘former’ RAF Woodbridge (two British
Army Lynx’s came in for a touch and go later that morning…).
At one point I suddenly noticed a green/white ‘mist’ emanating from
the trees – but quickly noticed it was occurring as the breeze blew,
and was caused by the trees (Jack pines according to what I’ve found
so far on the web) releasing clouds of pollen (by the time I came
out of that area I was covered in yellow dust)!
I
managed to photograph this, causing deluges of the stuff when
tapping the tree with my walking pole. It was odd, as close up
the pollen was clearly yellow - almost like flower of sulphur
flowers - but from a distance, and in photos its only green/white.
 I
have to confess I hadn’t even thought about trees releasing such
amounts of pollen before, but it does lead me to consider again some
reports and photos from there of the ‘mysterious mists’ – that said,
this possible explanation will be limited to the pollen season, so
certainly doesn’t cover autumn ‘mist events’.
I
continued my walk round the perimeter fence, taking a few photos as
I went – its certainly noticeable that the base inside the fence is
still being kept ‘tidy’ if nothing else, and must be regularly
sprayed with herbicide to keep the weeds and ferns down – which are
growing like mad up against the outside of the fence.
I had
a good look from the gate at East Gate and over in the direction of
Orford – obviously in daylight I couldn’t see any light from the
lighthouse, but I did note that the area now stated as where ‘Night
1’ by Penniston occurred was the most obvious part of the forest
that would have been visible to the MPs at that gate post.
Anyway, I’d been wandering round the forest tracks between the
Visitor Centre car park and the perimeter fence of the ‘former’ RAF
Woodbridge, and then walked along the road leading from the infamous
East Gate, and across into the forest on the other side of the
road. I was trying to avoid annoying the dogs (again!) over at
Folly House, and I was interested to see how the curious ‘clearing'
opposite the East Gate road entrance was now faring – this
‘clearing’ has been oddly devoid of normal forest undergrowth since
at least 1996 when we first visited and met the Essex bunch and
Brenda Butler.
Anyway, when I walked into this clearing, my attention was taken by
a silver object up ahead! Walking over, I found it to be a small
disk – of definitely terrestrial nature.. I’m not sure how this
wheel trim came to be over into this forest area – if it had
genuinely come off a car over on the road and bounced/rolled this
far, then it would have made Barnes Wallis proud! Given the nature
of some of the groups that frequent that forest area at weekends, I
wouldn’t be surprised if some of them hadn’t been mucking about with
this ‘disk’ – possibly for attempts at photographs.
Now, I
know as an investigator/researcher I shouldn’t have, but mischief
got the better of me, and I was genuinely curious how well my
digicam might record this wheel trim thrown up into the air. The
first attempt failed as I didn’t trip the shutter in time, and the
second attempt resulted in success... Mind you, if similar photos
start being seen on the internet or in magazines being stated as
genuine, we’ll know otherwise!
I had
some real wanders deep into the trees. As it was starting to spot
with rain I’d actually headed along the track that I now know leads
to the ‘outhouse’ and burial pit area, but then I noticed a bit of
marker warning tape around a tree branch, and another piece on a
tree a bit further off the track, almost looking like markers off
somewhere – so I followed. I hadn’t appreciated how dense those
trees were, at times I was looking round for the next gap to take me
out between trees – it was daft, as you could se patches of green
down through the trees, which I kept assuming was another path, but
its was only a small patch of grass in the space between trees.
This went on for several 10’s of metres – but this must have been a
good indication of what the whole forest must have been like in
December 1980, and how Pennistone and Halt’s ‘search parties’ must
have been tramping through the undergrowth, so yes they must have
had very limited visibility. After about 15 minutes I eventually
came out of the trees – by Warren’s oak tree – funny that… That
edge of Capel Green is still changing – undergrowth and sapling
trees now make it hard to get right to the field edge by the oak
tree itself.
It
took me a while to find my way back across to the burial pits
through the trees (I now kick myself, having spotted the quick was
in down track 10 and turn right at the first junction…) The pit
itself (the second one) hasn’t changed since the last time I visited
– back in May 2000, which in many ways is odd in itself. The metal
frame was still there, and it would be easy to think the area was
never visited – but there were very fresh lorry tyre tracks going in
and out of that clearing, so someone still gets down there.
The
most bizarre stuff is over at the brick outhouse place, which now
has sand piled up against one wall – I didn’t work out where it had
come in from, but as you can see from the photo, its not being piled
there manually by shovel..
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