This morning I woke up and decided it would be the day I started writing my blog about Ventnor and what a day I chose, for the carni has come to town! Well not exactly carni, more bomb disposal unit (BDU).
Apparently, yesterday a mine was found in the harbour and the 
BDU were heading down to carry out a controlled detonation. How exciting! It was on the national news last night, but I missed it.
Nobody knows whether it was washed in with the tide or has been there since WWII, although with the regeneration of the harbour it seems unlikely to be the latter.
Down to the action
After a quick charge of the camcorder batteries I head 
out to see what was going down. The sun was shining and I was on a high.
Might seem sad to some, but I’ve always wanted to watch a controlled detonation, although even better would be a controlled explosion of a tower block or unpopular carbuncle. Actually, I can think of a few places that might benefit from controlled explosions, one not too far from the harbour in fact.
On a mission
I decided to head down the cascade first and try to get more info. The heads of the onlookers resembled silvery buoys bobbing on the water. At the bottom, I noticed an ace bit of advertising by Islandwide Garage Doors. Good positioning guys ;-)
The bods from the bomb disposal unit were standing around chatting 
whilst waiting for the tide to go out, but the onlookers provided a hive of activity. Opinions on how the mine ended up there were bandied about, as well as how it was going to be removed, or whether it would blow up the boats still docked in the harbour!
Informed discussion
I overheard an interesting conversation between two elderly chaps who seemed to know what they were talking about. They discussed at length how the mine would’ve been made up and what the trigger mechanism was etc. Apparently hundreds of the same were placed around the UK east coast during WWII and their exact locations were never recorded as there wasn’t the time to do so.
The mine had positioned itself on the left of the harbour, just by the pontoon 
and every so often a couple of army bods and coastguards went down to have a look. In the meantime what looked like a TV crew set themselves up in prime position at the top of the slipway.
Pooh sticks
We waited, and waited and whilst we were waiting five men played 
pooh-sticks on the cascade!
Somehow the beautiful sunshine had been replaced with dark clouds and bitter winds and I was now beginning to regret not wearing warmer clothes, or gloves in fact.
At one point I noticed a Naval ship passing by, took a couple of grainy shots 
(the skies were battleship grey) and then noticed it turning towards the harbour and heading straight for us. We were all pleased to see it stop, turn round and head off up the coast – at an amazing speed btw.
Eventually the BDU bods started moving around and it looked as though the action would be imminent. About half an hour later once the local bobbies had moved everyone from the Cascade up to the safety of the Winter Gardens, an instruction was called out and BANG! Up went the 
water, a spectacular view and well worth the wait. It was all over as quickly as that. The boom was pretty loud, although it wasn’t heard up in town.
As my fingers were beginning to turn blue, I didn’t hang around to wait and find out who’d left their boots in the road.
