Lulworth Ranges

oleander2

oleander2

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Last Tuesday, I was enjoying a nice thrash up to Worbarrow Bay in a South Easterly Five. At 1205 the Range Boat called me up to inform that they were firing on the ranges. Quietly cursing the Cavalry Officers who chose the ranges on their proximity to their London clubs, I replied that I would only go as far as the Cove. At 1250 I reached the Cove and promptly turned tail for Weymouth. At 1300 the Ranges announced that they had finished for the day and the Range Boat was swiftly dispatched to Portland Harbour.

Whilst I accept the fact that the Cavalry needs somewhere to practice and do not know why they don't make better use of the Falkland Islands. I do feel that the Range Officers need to make it clear in advance that they might not be following the published timetable.
 
I'm surprised they did not advise you when they called you. Have you voiced this as a reasonable complaint to the Range Office?. I would.
 
Re: Lulworth Ranges - So?

You don't have to be deterred by anything the Range Patrol warns you: just proceed at maximum speed thro the area.

You weren't thinking of going outside were you?
 
Taking a regiment of tanks and artillery to the Falkland island would swallow up a significant portion of the defence vote (which is already 120% committted to Iraq and Afghanistan).

They would also be a long way away from where needed, and with the massive reduction of forces in the last ten years, a regiment of both is a very significant percentage of the overall army forces.

Dumb idea. Lulworth has been in use by the army for a lot longer than you have been sailing.
 
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Wouldn't they be better firing the shells at the Iraqi's, such a waste firing them to no effect.

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Good plan - lets send the poor barstewards out there not only with inadequate kit, but also with no training.
 
Had the same thing a couple of years ago. We'd anchored in Lulworth on a chartered sigma 38 during a very still November night after an aborted cross channel hop. We saw the Customs RIB coming in and thought "the divers have been out early" After a quick sniff round by their Spaniel in a life jacket (I felt really sorry for the rooky HM customes lady who found herself athwart our guard rail in the swell) and a question or two they let us on our way. The range boat pinged us almost immediately and shepherded us the whole two miles out. Every time we tried to pinch to the East they were there. When they released us we were slogging the tide and going nowhere. We started motorsailing and the engine cut out too. Our Skipper phoned the charter agent who said, "Oh yeah the engine cuts out when I motor sail too"
In short...we surfed our way into Pool harbour for the first time in the dark on springs, did a hand brake turn into Salterns marine and got last orders in the hotel! Not a bad weekend with lots of challenges!
 
If Tuesday wasn't bad enough to spoil your day. Wednesday was even worse. The Navy appeared and proceeded to give out the co-ordinates of a water based range.

Bearing in mind that that the Navy closed their Portland Base in 1998 this really spoilt the only two good days of an otherwise poor sailing week weatherwise.

My comments about the Falklands were tongue in cheek but in all seriousness in might not be a bad idea for the Navy as well.
 
Going from Poole to Weymouth, we hit a bank of pea soup fog. I went down to use the radar, forgetting to turn the radio on.

There was this blob in front of me. Which ever way I turned, the blob appeared again. This happened five or six times, till I managed to out manuver the blob and shot passed it. Bit further on and ner to Weymouth, the fog cleared and I saw a range boat, so contacted him, to see if it was ok to go through the range. He sounded puzzeled. Course it then dawned on me, after using all my mind power in the fog. I'd avoided the first range boat and I was now at the other end! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif
 
I seem to have spent a fair amount of my career on Army ranges waiting for range fouls to clear.
If you had any idea of the amount of time and money this can waste - and bear in mind that you, and I, are taxpayers, so it's our money - then you might have a little more consideration for those waiting for you to clear the range area before they can get on with the job.
Of course, it would be a good idea in principle if the time at which firing would finish could be made known. Unfortunately, so far as training and trials are concerned, it's rarely that things go entirely to plan.
 
I was once motoring through the ranges on a sunny summer's day when we heard a loud whistle then the noise of a big splash. This was repreated a few minutes later. There were no nav warnings in place and no safety boat. A bit perplexed we called the coastguard who told us they weren't firing today but they'd just check to make sure...a minute or so later came the all ships warning!...and then the coastguard called us back and said in so many words...you're alright boys they were firing way over your heads!!...very reassuring!
 
The biggest issue is that they don't stick to schedules at all. The number of times I've checked if they are firing, called the ranges etc, and headed 5 miles out to be helpful, only for them not to be firing at all that day, and watching boats proceed inshore with no range vessels out. If they gave accurate info, people would be a bit more obliging
 
I can fully understand the frustrations of those men and women actually on the range itself. Perhaps the real issue is that having a range on the south coast of England twenty miles from the busiest shipping lanes in the world and adjacent to the heaviest concentration of marine leisure activities in the British Isles if not Europe does not give the taxpayer value for money.

Why not shift the whole operation up to the north of the country? After all I, believe ,I am correct in thinking that most of the British Army recruits come from north of the Watford Gap.
 
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I am correct in thinking that most of the British Army recruits come from north of the Watford Gap.

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.....and that's where they'll be heading back to as soon as they can get home and get out, according to most of the 'embedded journalists'.....

The Army has no real need to retain small ranges in scenic areas such as Lulworth, Thetford Chase, and Castlemartin. Most of the serious 'live-fire' training is now done on the bigger ranges such as Otterburn, Larkhill, and Sennybridge. However, the Colonel Blimps who run those scenic 'basic training' camps, such as Bovington and Manorbier, are loath to move away from their comfortable long-term 'last postings' and their scenic thatched retirement cottages in idyllic Dorset and Pembrokeshire. Besides, each of them employ up to half a dozen 'locals' - who are usually superannuated veterans of the very regiments who use those places.

Local politics.......


/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif
 
I too have been frustrated by the lack of information about access times to the Lulworth ranges. One of the problems about closing the ranges down is the amount of explosives that is lying buried there. A local farmer who lives on land that was cleared after the war, told me that it would be virtually impossible for the army ever to make the land safe again. Unexploded ordinance is still found buried up to 15 feet deep at times on his farm and it would just not be possible to find and remove it all.

What a legacy for such a beautiful bit of coastline!
 
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What a legacy for such a beautiful bit of coastline!

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With the Army as custodians is precisely why it is unspoilt. No poxy caravan parks etc etc.
 
Yup - I agree, its wonderfully unspoilt by the modern blights you'd normally see on the coastline. The downside is the limited access to roam, but I think its a price worth paying...

Rick
 
What on earth is the point of having beautiful places if no one can get anywhere near to enjoy them? The legacy of having this particularly lovely spot permanently off limits for future generations is not something to be proud of.

Neither I grant you, is what we have done to some other ex-beauty spots. But to leave this one in a condition in which it can never again be enjoyed safely except at a distance seems particularly unhappy.
 
Don't believe for a minute that these areas cannot be enjoyed - by some!

One of the big pleasures of being plugged into the 'huntin', shootin', fishin' community ( not me, I add hurriedly! ) is the occasional invite by some fatcat Brigadier i/c A Gunnery Range ( read Private Nature Reserve ) to enjoy country pleasures - shooting deer and game birds, rodding fat trout and fine course fishing - in underutilised areas that the paying public have no access to, but he does......

You don't ever hear of these Blimps being blown up at Lulworth or Castlemartin by their own ordnance, do you? A scare story to keep out the hoi-poloi, IMHO.....


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Perhaps with the interest that this post has generated, Yachting Monthly might at the very least campaign for better publicity of Range Opening and Closing Times.
 
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