Dark Tourism BLOG
This page is intended to provide a more flexible and also more interactive element to dark-tourism.com, which is otherwise more static (more like an encyclopedia). The idea came about after the DT page I used to curate on Facebook was suddenly shut down by the company (full story here). So I’m continuing here – with regular blog posts, either featuring particular dark-tourism destinations or marking specific days in dark history and sometimes reacting to current affairs that are in some way relevant to this site’s topic.
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Orford Ness
Orford Ness, a shingle spit off the coast of Suffolk in the south-east of England, had been a military testing and research site since just before WW1. But what makes the place most relevant to dark tourism is the legacy of its role in the Cold War as one of the main sites used by the so-called “Atomic Weapons Research Establishment” (AWRE) of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Here all of the nuclear weapons developed by Britain were tested – not in the sense of actual nuclear tests (those were conducted in Australia, especially Maralinga, and later in the Pacific), but
The Channel Islands
This is the promised follow-up to the previous two posts (the one about my summer road trip through England and the other about yet more DT in London). So now to the Channel Islands, where I travelled to after London, first by train to Poole and then by ferry from there to Guernsey.
The ‘Channel Islands’ is a cover term for an archipelago of islands located in the English Channel (hence the designation) but geographically much closer to Normandy in France (to which they once belonged) than to Great Britain. The islands are British ‘Crown Dependencies’ and as such
Yet Another Return Visit to London
This is a follow-up post to the previous one, in which I reported on my DT-filled, four-week-long road trip through England. This ended in late August in London, where I dropped off my hire car at Heathrow Airport. After that I did not catch a flight, but took the Tube into, or rather: through London. I had a cheap hotel room for three nights booked far out east at the Royal Docks (named after Victoria, Albert and King George V). I picked that place not only
A long DT Road Trip through England
A few days ago I returned from my long summer travels, which included a substantial amount of DT fieldwork. The material collected will keep me busy for months as I prepare all those new and updated chapters for my main website. Weeks of photo processing will be the first hurdle.
For this Blog I decided, again, to give just a superficial overview of the trip first, with photos mostly taken by smartphone. More details and proper photos will come later in the
Dark Tourism & Skulls
This was the other theme that in our most recent theme poll (at the bottom of this post) came second on a par with “DT & Shoes”, which was the previous post’s topic, after the winning theme, “DT & Shadows”, yielded this post.
So now for “DT & Skulls”. This is again essentially a photo essay; for more information about the various places represented here, do follow the links provided!
Skulls (and bones) are of course quite commonly encountered in dark tourism. In some
Dark Tourism & Shoes
This is the theme that came second in our latest poll. The winning theme, ‘DT & Shadows’, featured in the previous post, and in that I already announced that I would post the second ranked themes without a new poll. So now for ‘DT & Shoes’. By the way, I’m using “shoes” in a wide sense to include boots, trainers, stilettos, etc. as well as regular shoes.
What do you first think of when contemplating where shoes and dark tourism meet? For many people it will probably be this