The original task: Find accommodation near a particular postcode.

So I bring up Google Maps and bung it in. I have a scan around, and “Ooh look at the lovely countryside”.

“Hmmn. What a nice forest.”

Looks like someone’s carved themselves out a nice little hidey hole.

Probably some old hunting lodge or manor.

On closer inspection it looks a bit untidy to say the least.

What the heck is that big white fallout area?

And the square perimeter fence looks like they don’t want any visitors.

Maximum zoom.

What I thought was perhaps a private hunting lodge with landscaped gardens, or even a clay pigeon range, is beginning to look very fishy. And no, I don’t mean like a ‘private fishing lake’.

It’s on ‘Clogs Bank’, but Google doesn’t really turn much up for that, except that it’s so called because the Button Oak wives could hear the clogs of their miner husband as they returned from Kinlet pit, and they knew to put on the potatoes!

I have a look around for Kinlet and “Button Bridge Lane’, but apart from the old disused mine “Kinlet Pit” there aren’t many leads. “Charcoal burners used to live in tent-like shelters called booths or boothen, while they were burning. This was the origin of the surname Booton and Button Oak and Button Bridge”

At least I’ve now found that I’m dealing with the Wyre Forest. I check out various forest visitor centres, but there seems to be no mention of manors, hunting lodges, etc.

There is another secluded estate in the forest, so I think that may give me a lead. I find a planning document.

It’s highlighted as a point of interest here (if you zoom in and turn on hybrid).

I find out it’s Coppice Gate Holiday Park but this doesn’t turn up too much apart from a nearby walk.

I decide to use the Coppice Gate Holiday Park postcode of “DY12 3DP” to have a look at the Ordnance Survey map.

I notice that the area of interest is labelled ‘Birchen Vallets’. Google turns up nothing particularly remarkable apart from some botanical field trips.

I have a go with Postensplain.

Pay dirt!

Have a look at the first link for the Harlequins orienteering group’s report on that neck of the woods.

Suffers from a huge out of bounds area in the middle – A W.W.II rocket testing station the inner sanctum if which is still in use. Most of the out of bounds is a safety buffer zone.

I just knew that place looked a bit odd. That white area is precisely the kind of scorched earth effect a horizontally tested rocket engine would produce.

Furthermore, the three paddocks or enclosures look as if they’ve been deliberately reserved for a long term test. Ideas anyone? Why would you mow most of the range apart from three sections? The middle one of which look’s newer (or most severely stunted).

Finally, it looks like there might be a missile silo towards the top, with a tarmac side entrance. Quite a lot of tarmac everywhere suggests quite a few vehicles running around – or a few with heavy loads (once taking earth away for disposal elsewhere…).

So, if I can find a nuclear missile launch facility completely by accident, presumably the Soviets found them decades ago through intent scrutiny. I suppose this is why there’s no point keeping satellite imagery secret, the only people who don’t know where the silos are, are the civilians – and at this rate we’re not going to be very far behind. Perhaps all the silos will be relocated underneath public swimming pools a la Thunderbirds?

No doubt there’s a website devoted to the weird and wonderful things you can find via Google Maps, but I’ll leave that to you to find.

I’m just surprised at how quickly one can go from “curious bit of forest” to “rocket testing station” simply by using Google.

It’s also surprising how much time one can waste being distracted by supposedly hidden facilities in the middle of forests when one simply wants to find a B&B.