There are some secrets you want to share particularly as we might be needing them soon, so I was intrigued by the signpost to Scotland’s Secret Bunker.
The bunker, amusingly, is located near St Andrews, the Home of Golf but they’re more interested here in nukes than niblicks.
Scotland’s Secret Underground Nuclear Centre, to give it its Sunday name, wasn’t advertised, naturally, back in the day.
But thankfully with the end of the Cold War (no, really) it is a tourist site.
Down on the farm
The bunker stands a hundred feet down with the entrance hidden in an unsuspecting farmhouse.
RAF Troywood, which was built in 1953, covers 24,000sqft of Command Centre.
It incorporates the radar technology of that era, dormitory, plotting room and mess.
The visitor attraction is open from February 1 to November 30.
It’s £13.95 for adults, £9.95 for children and £12.95 for concessions with a 2.2 family rate coming in at £37.95.
The bunker was primed for 50 years before it was put in mothballs but has thankfully been spruced up for our amusement.
Czech out the Bunker
Going underground gives a perspective into another world and you don’t have to be a military historian to enjoy it.
Of course, it stands to reason that while we were hunkering down in preparation for them attacking us.
The Warsaw Pact were doing the same over on their side.
Which I saw first hand in Prague in Czechia. On my Prague Communism Tour.
Where I was taken behind the thickest steel door imaginable on the side of a mound.
And taken down into the bowels of the Earth to see how the Czechs prepared to hide away from our bombs.
Needless to say the food was tinned meat an the likes although the Czechs would have stocked up on Urquell Pilsner.
They probably underestimated too how many loos they would have needed for full-blooded Pragueites.
Hitler’s hideaway
Check out (sorry) too nuclear bunkers from Arizona to Asia for similar experiences.
While to experience what life must have been like in the most famous bunker of all head for Berlin.
Alas Hitler’s Reichstag in the German capital is no longer there but they have recreated it for you here… it’s the next best thing.
And, of course, we’ll be there just as soon as we can.
For now though we’re looking into Scotland’s Secret Bunker… just in case we need it soon.