Southwold Pier
THE QUIRKIEST THING YOU'VE EVER SEEN
The year is still 2012, the place is still Suffolk. In a town called Southwold there is a very strange thing. It’s a beautiful vintage pier on the coast that houses the most quirky machines you’d ever see.
I discovered this by chance, just like the balancing barn, and basically spent the rest of the day one it. The no-smoking sign itself was quirky, and music to my eyes. Or whatever. It meant there was a chance of finding a smoke-free outdoor café. That’s a rarity in these lands.
The pier itself is beautiful. Unfortunately the photos don’t do it justice. Firstly, they were taken with the ancient iPhone 4 with a scratched up lens - hence the smudgy effect. Secondly, it was a perfectly grey British day.
THE RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED GADGET
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"England Heritage is delighted to present the Quantum Tunnelling telescope, first tested here on Southwold pier in 1968. It was developed by the Anglian Laboratory at Orfordness. An astonishing achievement for the time, it exploited the latest advances in particle physics and quantum dynamics......In use at the government's GCHQ, monitoring activities in communist territories, it completely changed the course of the cold war"
WHAT!?. It was like something out of 1960's Sci-fi! I was hooked.
I then went on for the rest of the day to slowly discover other such quirky wonders ranging from science to science fiction, to fiction. Some of the gems included a water clock, an auto-frisking machine, a gene forecaster and a personal nuclear reactor.
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I don't know if I was born in the wrong decade, or even era, but there appears to have been easy fixes to all the ailments that plague us today; be it financial, medical, social or otherwise :)
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There were quite a few more, but above were some of my favourite. Like I said, I spent the entire day on the pier, including having lunch in a bizarre fish shop. I don't know if this is still there, since I haven't been back to that part of the world since, but I'd definitely visit again if I ever did go.
Which was your favourite contraption of the above?
Peace & Love,
Adé