exercise

A hiker has shared a video of herself exploring a stunning coastal town which is just over an hour’s train journey from London and offers visitors the luxury of a hidden beach with its own shipwreck

A hiker has highlighted a breathtaking town which boasts a secluded beach complete with its own shipwreck. Zoe Tehrani, who is based in the London, posted footage of herself climbing down a rusty ladder onto the shingle beach before setting off on a winding trail across the cliff face.

“There might also be a creepy tunnel that used to be a smuggling route,” she enthused in a TikTok video. Zoe went on to describe her journey, explaining she boarded the train at London St. Pancras and travelled for 66 minutes.

The town she visited is Dover, which has a railway station located just a 10-minute walk from the coastline. “It’s not the most scenic to get there, but at least there’s a mist tunnel along the way,” Zoe continued.

“I followed signs for the White Cliffs of Dover, passed colourful houses, headed up the chunky hill then at the top the trail levelled out nicely.”

Zoe then aimed her camera down towards the beach, and headed off once more on another winding trail, making a steady descent. She warned that inside the smugglers’ tunnel there are no lights, which is “a little bit creepy”.

“There’s a few things you need to know about this beach,” she added. “It’s underwater at high tide, so it needs to be out a bit – and you don’t want to sit [directly] below the cliffs because they are crumbling.”

Zoe decided to take a swim in the Channel, which meant carefully picking her way through seaweed to reach the water.

“You definitely want sea shoes for this one,” she suggested. “And it’s much nicer to get in when the tide is a little higher, so I chilled for a bit, had some lunch and then it was perfect.”

The White Cliffs of Dover paths are managed by the National Trust, which advises online: “There is a wheelchair-friendly footpath that leads to a viewing point, ideal if you just want a short route to see the famous cliffs.

“This all-weather path is built with a staggered incline, which allows for a few breathers on the way up. At the top is one of the best views of the cliffs, with the rolling green landscape and sheer chalk edge, dropping to the sea below.”

Venturing further along gives walkers a choice of routes, which are steeper closest to the cliff edge and more gentle further inland.

“These will take you to Fan Bay Deep Shelter and South Foreland Lighthouse,” the National Trust continues. “Beyond the lighthouse, you can continue walking the coast path to St Margaret’s, Kingsdown, or even Walmer or Deal.

“The ground can be uneven and the weather unpredictable, so please wear stout shoes and dress appropriately.”

Responding to Zoe’s clip, one TikTok user commented: “[I] went. Worth it for the views and the challenge but the beach/water is pretty bad. And the ladder was so scary, almost vertical.”

While a second person praised: “Stunning area.”

The MQ-28 Ghost Bat drone will gain a valuable opportunity to prove its relevance in a high-end coalition environment as part of Valiant Shield 26, the sprawling U.S.-led military exercise spanning Japan, Guam, Hawaii, and Australia, which began this week. It is also, as far as we know, the first time that the MQ-28 has taken part in a multinational large-force exercise of any kind. The participation of the collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) comes soon after Boeing confirmed it was conducting a separate series of test flights of the drone off the coast of southern California, part of efforts to validate autonomous operations and demonstrate rapid deployment from an allied location.

While Australia’s contribution to Valiant Shield includes a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and around 80 personnel, one of the more notable aspects is the involvement of Australian Defense Forces (ADF) aviator observers alongside a U.S.-led MQ-28 component. The arrangement will allow Australian personnel to work with operators and planners as the uncrewed aircraft is employed in a complex, multi-domain operational environment for the first time.

Directed by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Exercise Valiant Shield 2026 kicked off on Monday and continues through July 1.

“Valiant Shield demonstrates our enduring commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Adm. Steve Koehler, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in a media release. “Exercising advanced multidomain capabilities with our allies ensures we continue to seamlessly innovate and operate together, project combat power together, and prevail over any challenge — together.”

The U.S. Air Force today released a series of photos showing an MQ-28 taking part in Valiant Shield. The drone was photographed at Rota, in the Northern Mariana Islands, on June 21. Accompanying captions state that the Ghost Bat will be used to advance human-machine teaming, including flying in concert with crewed fighters.

“The Department of the Air Force and its partners will analyze the aircraft’s contribution as a force multiplier that extends the reach, awareness, and survivability of crewed platforms in contested environments,” the U.S. Air Force adds.

The MQ-28 involved in the exercise is configured with an infrared search and track (IRST) sensor system in the nose. The Ghost Bat is a highly modular design, with the nose section designed to be readily swappable.

The Ghost Bat’s participation in Valiant Shield comes as Australia continues efforts to mature collaborative combat aircraft concepts, an increasingly important component of future air warfare, with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) currently very much at the forefront. Designed to operate alongside crewed fighters and other assets, like tankers and airborne early warning and control aircraft, the MQ-28 is intended to extend sensor coverage, serve as a weapons platform, and perform a variety of other missions while reducing risk to human pilots.

Valiant Shield offers a particularly relevant proving ground for the MQ-28. The exercise brings together forces from the United States, Australia, Japan, Canada, and New Zealand to train in responding to coordinated threats across the maritime, air, land, cyber, and space domains. Participants will be required to detect, track, and engage shared threats while operating across a vast geographic area and under realistic conditions.

For the Ghost Bat program, exposure to this type of coalition environment is significant. Future conflicts in the Indo-Pacific will require seamless integration between allied forces, crewed aircraft, and increasingly sophisticated autonomous systems. Observing how the MQ-28 is incorporated into a large-scale multinational exercise should provide valuable insights as Australia moves toward making its collaborative combat aircraft capabilities operational. Currently, the MQ-28 is slated to be in service with the RAAF in 2028, which would likely make it the first operational CCA anywhere in the world.

The exercise also reflects growing allied interest in integrating uncrewed systems into complex command-and-control architectures and air defense networks. As autonomous aircraft move from experimentation toward operational service, events such as Valiant Shield are becoming important venues for testing how these systems contribute to the broader fight rather than operating as standalone assets. Valiant Shield has served as a diverse test crucible in recent years, with advanced capabilities being put through their paces in a realistic, joint-force environment.

According to defense reporter Carter Johnston, the Ghost Bat’s Indo-Pacific deployment will include operations from an austere airfield led by the U.S. Air Force. This will be conducted under the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept, something that is seen as fundamental to survival in a future conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific region. It is also notable that the U.S. Air Force’s new CCA drones are being developed from the ground up around concepts for distributed and disaggregated operations.

The exact status of the MQ-28 with the U.S. military testing community is somewhat unclear, as we have discussed before. There have been indications of Ghost Bat flight testing in the United States in the past, and the U.S. Air Force previously said it had made use of at least one MQ-28 to support advanced uncrewed aircraft and autonomy development efforts. Regardless, the Air Force, at least, has test units set up to explore exactly how to use CCAs operationally, including in an ACE-type environment. This kind of testing is now also involving the first two Air Force Increment 1 CCAs, with the YFQ-44 Fury ‘fighter drone’ prototype notably having been tested out of Edwards Air Force Base, California, helping to demonstrate how CCAs can be deployed and sustained in contested environments.

Other U.S. participants in Valiant Shield 2026 include the George Washington Carrier Strike Group, based around the aircraft carrier USS George Washington with the embarked Carrier Air Wing 5, the cruiser USS Robert Smalls, and the destroyers USS Benfold and USS Shoup.

Valiant Shield 2026 will also see the deployment of the containerized Typhon missile system in Japan. According to the Japan Ministry of Defense, the Typhon and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) will participate in Joint Integrated Anti-Ship Warfare training carried out in the waters around Kanoya and Amami Oshima Island. However, no live firing is scheduled.

The U.S. Army’s Typhon was first deployed to Japan last year, as you can read about here. The system, which can fire Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 multi-purpose missiles, is a growing feature of U.S. military activities in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Returning to the Ghost Bat, it now seems that the test flights of the MQ-28 off the coast of southern California from the U.S. Navy’s base in Point Mugu, California, were an important precursor to Valiant Shield. In fact, the same drone that was flown out of Point Mugu, ATS-008, is the example now involved in Valiant Shield.

Boeing had previously said its main goals of those flights were to demonstrate the maturity of the design and promote export sales. As we noted at the time, the choice of testing location also seemed to be relevant given Boeing’s involvement in the Navy’s still-evolving carrier-based CCA plans.

As for the MQ-28’s previous test campaigns, the drone has been flying in Australia since 2021, with the RAAF having received eight Ghost Bats in the pre-production Block 1 configuration.

Boeing is now building the first of a batch of nine Block 2 drones for the RAAF, which will provide an intermediate stepping stone to the fully operational Block 3 version. The Block 3 aircraft is expected to be substantially larger and have a greater range. It will also feature an internal weapons bay that can accommodate a single AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), two GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs (SDB), or equivalently sized stores.

The RAAF has employed Block 1 MQ-28s to demonstrate some important capabilities in testing so far. This includes crewed-uncrewed teaming with RAAF E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft and F/A-18F Super Hornet fighters.

When it comes to potential export sales, participation in Valiant Shield will give Japan, Canada, and New Zealand a closer look at the drone and its capabilities. Of these, Boeing has already publicly named Japan as a potential customer and has said it is exploring potential opportunities with other unnamed countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

Valiant Shield should offer the clearest indication yet of how the Ghost Bat can contribute to a coalition fight. As the United States and its allies increasingly embrace autonomous combat aircraft, the MQ-28’s performance in one of the Indo-Pacific’s largest and most complex military exercises will be watched closely as an indicator of how collaborative combat aircraft could be employed across the region in the future.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

A Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber crashed in Siberia’s Irkutsk region during a training flight, but all four crew members had managed to safely eject. The Soviet-era supersonic bomber has been used by Russia in combat operations in Syria and Ukraine.

A hiker has shared the location of “one of the best places to see bluebells in the UK”, stating that it’s so unknown, “you’d never find it unless you knew it was there”

For walkers and lovers of the great outdoors, a peaceful corner in the South West of England has been hailed as “one of the best places to see bluebells in the UK”. South Devon hiker, Elise Spicer, shared insider knowledge during a recent ramble in South Brent, highlighting a spectacular woodland area.

“Hardly anyone talks about it, but tucked away in South Brent, Lady’s Wood is one of those spots you’d never really find unless you knew it was there,” she explained in a video. Accompanied by her dog, Elise went on to describe how the walk becomes “absolutely beautiful” when the bluebells are in bloom, as they are now.

She continued: “It’s only about 1.5km circular and takes about 30 minutes – so it’s perfect if you just want something short and easy, plus it’s really great for kids.”

Elise captured more footage of her surroundings as she passed beneath a viaduct arch, drawing attention to the walk’s serene clear stream and wild garlic flourishing amongst the flowers.

“It’s such a peaceful feel all the way round and there’s a little river at the start. It’s actually part of a nature reserve too, so it’s really well looked after,” she added.

Elise also noted that there’s a footpath leading directly onto Dartmoor for those wanting to venture further into the National Park.

Devon Wildlife Trust describes the location: “This small reserve acts as a gateway to the wild landscape of Dartmoor. Bluebells and dormice are the stars of our oldest nature reserve.

“A wonderful woodland lying on a gentle north facing slope above the Glaze Brook. The nature reserve holds a wonderful bluebell display each spring and is a stronghold for the hazel dormouse. This was Devon Wildlife Trust’s first nature reserve and remains one of its loveliest.”

To reach it, take a minor road from South Brent towards Cheston/Wrangaton. A track leading to the reserve can be found on the right-hand side of this road, just past Glazebrook Court.

Responding to Elise on TikTok, one user enthused: “It’s beautiful, my partner used to live there, done that walk many a time.”

Another person chimed in: “Ooh gonna check this out.”

On the subject of bluebells, the RHS notes: “Woodland floors carpeted with bluebells are appreciated for their natural beauty, with many people visiting bluebell woods in mid- to late-spring.

“The flowers can attract bees and butterflies, including the brimstone, orange-tip and pearl-border fritillary. As a source of nectar in spring, bluebells are a useful addition to wildlife gardens. They can also provide good ground cover in spring and summer, particularly under deciduous trees and shrubs.”

Long-haul flights can cause in-flight circulation stiffness and fatigue, especially for older travellers

Anyone who’s flown long-haul will be acutely aware of the stiffness, exhaustion and sluggish circulation that can develop, potentially marring the start of your holiday. And this is particularly relevant for older passengers.

With this in mind, Inspiring Vacations has teamed up with Melbourne-based Pilates instructor Brittany Tatterson to reveal some movements anyone can perform while still aboard their flight.

She explained: “Seated movements every 30 to 60 minutes are ideal, with the opportunity to stand and walk every one to two hours where possible. Many people wait until they already feel stiff, but by that point the body has already tightened and circulation has slowed.

“The good news is you don’t need to stand in the aisle or take up extra space. The most effective movements are often the smallest and can be done entirely within your seat.”

The discreet in-seat exercises you can do (without anyone noticing)

The first movement Brittany suggests is gently tilting your pelvis forward and backwards, as this can help engage your core and relieve pressure from your lower back.

“You can also keep your toes on the floor and slowly lift your heels up and down to encourage circulation through the legs, which is particularly important on long-haul flights,” Brittany added.

“Breathing is another big one. Inhaling through your nose and allowing your ribs to expand, then exhaling slowly, can help improve both your breathing and overall energy levels.” She also notes that even minor neck movements, such as gentle nods, turns and slight tilts, can alleviate tension that accumulates from screen time and poor posture.

Meanwhile, simply clenching and releasing your glutes can help support your pelvis and ease strain on the lower back without drawing any attention from those around you.

How to move without annoying your neighbour

While these movements are vital for a comfortable journey, Brittany emphasises that they should never come at the expense of those around you.

“Move slowly and mindfully; there’s no rush. Slower movement is not only more considerate, it’s actually more effective for the body,” she says. “The key is to keep everything small and controlled, staying within your own space wherever possible.”

A few simple etiquette rules can make all the difference:

• Keep movements small and within your seat space
• Avoid wide arm stretches or anything intrusive
• Move during quieter moments, not meal service
• Only walk the aisle when it’s clear