The chances of anything coming from Mars (Kent)

No one would have believed in the last years of the 19th century that human affairs where being watched by intelligences that inhabited the timeless worlds of space.

No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of spaceminds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely they drew their plans against us

With that in mind peering out to sea off the Kent Coast I could see what looked like a small army of Martians (My eyesight has never been that good) but this merited a closer visit.

A bit of research as usual revealed that these were not an invasion of our green eyed inter planet neighbours but in fact the opposite a defence for an invasion from another enemy - Germans!

The Maunsell naval forts were built in the Thames estuary and operated by the Royal Navy, to deter and report German air raids following the Thames as a landmark, and prevent attempts to lay mines by aircraft in this important shipping channels, and named after their designer, Guy Maunsell. There are several sets of forts that can be seen and visited but I was only one interested in the Red Sands Fort - this is the closest to the Kent coast and boats trips from Sheerness and Whistable are reasonably frequent during the warmer months

There are seven towers in the Red Sands group at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. The towers had been connected by metal grate walk-ways. In 1959 consideration was given to refloating the Red Sands Fort and bringing the towers ashore but the costs were prohibitive. In the early 21st century, in response to proposals to demolish the fort, a group called Project Red sands was formed to try to preserve it.

I travelled the reasonably short trip from home down to the Isle of Sheppy to depart from the All tide landing at Queenborough, it was a red hot day and already 30c by 10:00 so a perfect day to be out on a boat , it's around a four hour return trip on what was an old Thames Tug - in fact one of my social aquaintences aka Tug Boat (I love original pubs names, - MTT - Micky Two Tooth and Barely Alive Clive to name but two and some of the cleaner ones) was the skipper in it's previous life before it was sold a few years back to the current owners.

About 20 of us on the boat with a crew of two and one of the main project co-ordinators onboard providing some interest history and plans for the future of the Red Sands Fort. We passed a variety of activity on the way out including jet ski's , massive containers and a selection of various sized leisure craft.I also got a good view of the Grain Fort - mentioned in a previous blog on my left hand side.

About an hour of so of very pleasant sailing (so you sail in a Tug Boat?) I caught the first glimpse of our pseudo-martian structures - we very lucky it was such a clear , calm day and within another 20 mins pulled up right alongside them.

I was updated by Flo (the Red Sands Champion) that working parties are frequently out here and that is the only safe way to get onboard the remaining structurely sound one. There are some exicting plans about potential conversion into allowing guests to stay overnight. These were all joined up originally

We circled for about 30 mins for some of the more serious photographer to take some picture , in fact the one below was taken by Flo and featured in Country Living

It was time to head back but managed to get a bonus view of the SS Richard Montgomery The ship was wrecked off the Nore sandbank in the Thames Estuary, near Sheerness, England in August 1944, whilst carrying a cargo of munitions. Around 1,400 tonnes of explosives remain on board which continue to be a significant hazard . It's often quoted as if this were to exploded Sheerness would not exist anymore!. We got a close as we could although not within touching distance - we left that to some paddleboarding nutter a while ago but you could get a decent view of the remaining masts and speculated just how big a bang it would make. It was one of the reasons rumoured to have squashed Boris's Mad Airport plans a few years ago.

An excellent day out.