With the days shortening and signs of Autumn feasting on Summer's entrails, we made good use of the last week of the holidays with visits to old and new. The latter, Orford Ness, a place quite unlike any other. Where else can you see Peregrines bombing over a landscape pock-marked with forgotten piles of rust, preening Avocets and former weapon testing facilities? Had the Peregrines have been present here during the Cold War, I wonder would the scientists have considered their ability to seemingly defy physics in the sky, much as they wished their payloads to do. Much mystery and intrigue surrounds what went on here in the era of the Iron Curtain, it being said that the men in one building had no idea what was being developed in the next cabin 100 metres away. Such was the need for hush in trying times. Great minds, silent heroes have left their mark here. St. Benet's Abbey has embraced folk horror, the wicker monks now maintaining an eerie vigil around the rui...