Early morning digging and unexploded ordnance

It's been an interesting morning here today!

Unfortunately, we had to close the reserve for the morning today due to an unexpected incident...

 You may have seen (if you've been to the reserve recently, or if you've read the blog posts) that we are having some work completed on site.  We have had a lovely contractor on site to reporfile the scrapes in front of the Ken Barrett and the Butts Hide. This work will create a better landscape to encourage wildfowl and waders to feed, linger and approch closer to our hide.

Well today the lovely Warden here at the reserve, Nicole, and the contractor were out digging and reprofiling, when something caught Nicole's eye...
 No idea how she spotted it! She had a closer look and then backed off quickly! The reserve used to be MoD training ground so we have to be careful with this sort of thing!

 So after getting a radio call first thing in the morning ("I think I've found a bomb!"), the Police and Bomb Squad were called and went to investigate.

It turned out to be a 2" High Explosive Mortar, that would've looked something like this:

 It would've been left over from World War 2 when the area was used as a training camp.

The Bomb Squad were convinced it was a dud, but couldn't confirm that so they decided to complete a controlled explosion!
 Here the bomb sqaud are preparing for the controlled explosion (with a rather entertained contractor - bit of a different morning!)

 Watched by a group of people in the visitor centre (which was open as usual). The biggest twitch we've had this autumn!

After Nicole mocved the cattle into a different field, and everyone moved away it was safe to explode!

And this is what it looked like afterwards:

Well that was a different morning!

The reserve is open as usual now, so come over and visit!