What to see

A fascinating site but one now nearly completely lost to woodland and overgrown by heavy vegetation.
The site surrounds the former Fort de Nacqueville – an extensive French fortress built in the 1890s to protect the western approaches to the port of Cherbourg.
It stands around 800 metres inland of the beach and just a few metres from the village of Urville-Nacqueville, but you wouldn’t know it was there from any of the roads cutting through the area.
Despite the remaining buttresses of the forts western and southern walls standing at least 20 metres high, they are almost invisible until you are just a few yards away from the structure. Getting to them is tricky too, especially in the summer months when the foliage is in full growth – and you also have to contend with several deep trenches which can be hidden by vegetation!
However, you can catch glimpses of some WW2 concrete at this site which was occupied by the Luftwaffe who used it as a radio listening station, naming it Station ‘Caster’.
This aircraft detection station consisted of eight Hans E-Mess Gerat FuSAn 733 type antenna with a range of around 300km. It’s not known which type were here and there were two different configurations.
The first type was a simple 20m high pole with a small antenna mounted on top while the second configuration and required more support at the base for a taller pole and antenna at around 25m height.
A mobile version was also developed which featured a 13m high wooden pole with the antenna on top and this would link back to a radio vehicle via cables.
Surrounding the central site and former fort building – which included French ammunition storage buildings, troop shelters, and observation posts - was a ring of German-built defensive Tobruks.
The two at the east and west extremes are of the Vf69 type which would have housed 5cm mortars.
Those at the north west and south east locations were built for heavy machine guns and covered the access roads leading to the site.
In the lead up to the D-Day landings the site was heavily bombed and put out of action – the archive images of it show a scene of highly concentrated craters.
Today, the main area around the fort is mature woodland punctuated with hidden drops and broken concrete – this is not a site to explore without safety equipment and certainly not on your own!