World War II Pillboxes and Rabbit Holes

It was Bank holiday, hubby had the afternoon off, the sun was shining, the kids didn't want to be stuck indoors, so we jumped in the car and headed down to the cliffs to find pillboxes and rabbit holes.

The kid were excited as they love to find and climb on the world war pillboxes in the cliff, they love to run up and down the cliff hills, spot as many rabbit holes as possible and throw lots of stones in the sea. There are several pillboxes along the cliff, many in whole condition, a few broken and one buried in the sand; their favorite is the anti-tank gun emplacement as it look pretty awesome.Exploring the pillboxes gets the kids imagination going, they absorb the environment, it takes them back, and they start to re-enact. Although the pillboxes are, unfortunately, full of broken bottles, cans and rubbish - You can't enter them in fear of what rubbish is in them, which is such a shame. When I was a kid they were kept clean, but now it doesn't look like they have been cleaned in years. The boys would love to get in the pillboxes and peek through the gun holes, but it is clearly too dangerous, god knows what is in amongst the rubbish.

First we strolled along the beach, threw some stones in the sea and spotted some unusual stones.



Then we climbed up to the first pillbox, which has broken over the years - with Jacob's imagination running wild he exclaimed "It was bombed" ... "watch out for the bombers"


We found our first rabbit hole. There are plenty around the cliffs, big and small holes, unfortunately, over the years we've never managed to spot a rabbit.

The boys couldn't resist climbing the trees. Summer didn't get very far.




Another pillbox; we peeked in the doorway, but that is as far as we could go, it was full of rubbish, broken bottles and all sorts down there.



Back down the cliff.

Another pillbox.

Up a hill to find another pillbox.

We found a tree swing.

Yet another pillbox. The boys really enjoyed finding them, especially any part-hidden ones, ones that didn't visibly sit on the cliffs.

We finally came to the anti-tank gun emplacement, and as you can imagine, the boys get rather excited with this, imagining a big gun shooting down tanks arriving on the beach.

A fantastic day where we spent 3 hours walking, discovering, and running.