A return trip to see the Aberlady Submarine wrecks and nature reserve

We went to Aberlady beach and nature reserve yesterday. Aberlady is a lovely wee village just along the coast from Edinburgh here in Scotland. It has a large beach and nature reserve. Interestingly, there are the wreck of two World War 2 min-submarines on the beach there, which you can visit and see at low tide !

There is a small car park just outside Aberlady, for the nature reserve. From there it is around a 2 mile walk to the submarines.

The nature reserve itself is also quite nice and worth seeing. You start out crossing this lovely wooden bridge which takes you over the mouth of the river - which has warning signs for quick sand !

The coastal area there is a combination of mud-flats and beach. The area has a very gradual slope, so when the tide goes out, it goes out for a mile or more !

Thats a view of the tidal pools in the river mouth over the side of the bridge. The tide will come in all the way up here at full tide.

The nature reserve is a haven for wild birds and consists of what I would call wetlands. Its so flat that you get this sort of big sky effect there. The 'mountains' you can see in the distance are actually hills over in Fife, which is the next region up in Scotland, but sits across the Firth of Forth (a sea inlet) from Aberlady.

We spotted this lovely wee plant while strolling through the nature reserve.

We also came across this rather ominous feature while walking towards the beach. This crash helmet must have washed up with the debris on the high tide line, and someone had stuck it on this pole. It sort of looked like one of those warning signs you see in the films where peoples heads have been put on a spike !

After just over a mile of walking we got to the part of the beach we were looking for. As said, it has a very gradual slope, so the tide goes way out - and it wasnt even all the way out when we were there.

Even once you get to the start of the beach its still a good 10 minute walk to get far enough out to where the submarines are.

There are 2 submarines there. They are called X-subs, or X-craft, and were specifically designed for a secret mission during world war 2 to sink a battleship.

The two that are on the beach here were spare and left over after the end of the war. In around 1946 they were moored here as targets specifically to test out some new armour piercing ammunition. A spitfire (a British plane from world war two) then did strafing runs on them to test out the ammunition. I guess it was successful because they clearly sank !!!

I have to say that they are quite amazing to see. I had actually read the story about them maybe 5-6 years ago, but at the time didnt realise that there were two of them here on the beach. They are actually quite small, at maybe only around 8m in length.

You would have had to have been fairly slim to fit inside of them. From memory they had a crew of 3 people. You would have had to have been brave as heck, and not be claustrophobic to go in these things !

They clearly are rather deteriorated now, but you can still easily make out the entrance hatches and other equipment. In the pic above one of the hatches is right in the bottom left corner, and the other one is further up towards the top right, beside a small pipe, which would have either been some kind of an exhaust or maybe for a periscope.

The subs were moored out via this massive concrete block which sits in between them. It is also an item that has been re-used from the war. This was an anti-tank barrier, many of which were placed along our beaches just incase there was an invasion from the sea.

I still find it fascinating that they were just left there to deteriorate. I guess back in 1946 they werent so environmentally minded. We would have also been re-building after the war, so I guess resources were scarce and had to be prioritised.

They certainly make for an unusual thing to visit. Their story is quite remarkable. Its the second time we've been out to see them (I also posted about it the last time we saw them). We decided to go again because the walk to get to them is so nice - even our teenage daughter didnt complain that much !!!

It was also quite a nice day, and we enjoyed the exercise (about 5 miles round trip or so). A great wee place to explore and a lovely day out !

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