Here we go round the Mulberry ...

Maybe as long as 55 years ago, a travelling salesman came to the back door of Elim House, and persuaded my parents that the encyclopedias he was offering were the key to knowledge, wealth, happiness, and all round success. OK, they were expensive, but they certainly provided hour upon hour of reading, and there was a wonderful pull out diagram of the inner workings of a steam engine, which I pored over for many an hour. Actually, I should use the word "was" as I still have the whole set, and still occasionally open a page or two!

Now one photo that fascinated me all those years ago was of the building of one of the "caissons" for the Mulberry Harbours" used immediately after D-Day. There seemed to be thousands of rods of steel pointing into the sky, and a base of concrete, totally beyond my comprehension.

Fast forward from the fifties to the nineties, and as we holidayed close by Arromanches the sight of many of the Caissons still in the same position they had been laid in 1944 seemed incredible. They are still there now - minus some that were taken off to become the foundations in the Dutch sea wall, or other major sea defence work in France. The French even tried to recover the steel from some of them in the early 1950s when there was a shortage but gave up and those particular caissons are still visible at low tide now.

Tomorrow, we'll be off again to Arromanches, where the Mulberry Harbour will provide a spectacular backdrop to the D-Day commemorations. But there are a couple of Winteringham related questions that remain unanswered....

Eastwood's Cement Factory was almost brand new at the time, and we know that it provided 75,000 tons of cement for the major building work at Rosyth. But did it ever provide material for the Mulberry Harbour? With Britain's economy so dedicated to the war effort, it seems more than likely that in those caissons still lying off Arromanches, there's a bit of Winteringham and South Ferriby standing as a sentinel to the greatest ever seaborne invasion.

Secondly, of course - is some of the steel in those from Scunthorpe, and perhaps produced with the help of Winteringham men and women in those dark days?

An early start in the morning may mean the websites are not updated as usual, but there'll be at least one person in France thinking of Winteringham when he looks out over the Mulberry Harbour, designed for ten weeks use, and still there 65 years on!