France 2nd April 2015 - Le Fort Nieulay Calais

This is another blast from the recent past, a trip to the Alps made in the spring of this year. It was a holiday that lengthened slightly due to transport breakdown, and changed weatherwise from cold to quite hot over the course of a couple of days.
We started by taking the campervan across to Calais via the Tunnel. We used to use the ferry as we enjoyed the trip but the dog took against it with slightly dirty protest, so since then we have gone underground.
We had booked a small apartment in Montchavin in the French Alps in case the snow was deep, in which case the van would struggle. We need not have worried as there was not a lot of the white stuff around when we finally arrived. However we did spend a while getting there as there were a couple of things we wanted to take in on the journey.
The first was an interesting trip to le Fort Nieulay, one of two fortifications built to defend Calais in the 15th and 16th centuries, when it was in English hands. This fort stands by some sluice gates which could be opened in times of adversity to allow the River Hames to flood the landward side of the town and stop attack from that direction. The original fort was square with 4 towers and erected in 1556. But it fell to the French in 1558 when they attacked before the sluice gates could be opened.
The French enlarged the fort, but still the town was lost to the Spanish in 1596, who held it until 1598 when the French finally took over again. The fort was improved still further by Vauban in 1675 when the sluice gates were incorporated into the structure.The English were to attack Calais again in 1694 and 1696 and in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars but were not successful. The towns marshes were drained in the early 19th century and so the fort lost it's strategic importance and was allowed to decay.
I used my Nikon camera converted to infrared to take these pictures. Infrared suits this sort subject well and there were enough clouds around to make the sky interesting but not over complicated. They are almost as out of camera except a little desaturated as they can come out a very deep umber.
















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