Sunday, 4 November 2012

Presumably inspired by The Maginot Line

10 comments:

Ian Hills said...

Lovely picture of tank tracks across the Ardennes.

Bayard said...

Cheapskate!

Graeme said...

mmm...well a lot of the old Maginot Line forts are still impressive to visit today and some were still being used by NATO in the 1980s. Plus the copies of maginot forts in the Czech Republic were still off-limits to tourists in the 2000s, last time I checked, on tactical grounds. The efforts pictured here have a lot to live up to. (PS, fortified in reverse, with the major guns not bearing on the approach routes, the French forts took a lot of effort to recapture from the Germans in 1944-45). Just saying.

Steven_L said...

You still got that golf? I remember you posting about buying that must have been 3 years ago.

2k will get you a newer shape 2.8 now, a high mileage 325i or a clio 172!

Mark Wadsworth said...

IH, well obviously, The Ardennes are (is?) to the north of where the Maginot Line is, so they don't show up on that picture.

B, they built it, not me.

G, well in that case the Allies should have gone round the back. At what stage did they turn round the guns on the Czech forts? Until 1990 or so, the enemy was in the west, from then on, the enemy was to the east of the other side of the country, so it would have been great for defending Germany against the USSR but not much help to the Czechs (had the Russians invaded again).

SL, I've had it for over four years now, it's still absolutely fine, why should I scrap it and pay £2k for something marginally better (but possibly worse)?

James Higham said...

Oh yes, that's pure Maginot.

Bayard said...

Mark, that was aimed at him, not you, for skimping on a short bit of wall where your fence was low.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, ta.

B, fair enough.

The fence (now you mention it) is another f-ing disaster. They replaced the whole fence between their plot and where we live, starting with the panel just out of the right edge of the picture.

The new fence is a nice 6' high solid fence and they just left those four panels, including the three offending low ones at the front.

In the name of all that is unholy, why not just do those four front panels to match as well? I think that the only reason the front ones are lower is because their used to be some bushes/low trees on the other side, which were chopped down once they started building, there's no real reason any more.

Bayard said...

Indeed, the cost of the new, taller panels would have been small compared to the cost of the Maginot Line next to it, but as I said before, never underestimate the power of incompetence.

Physiocrat said...

The ultimate expression of home ownerism.