Duxford IWM

Today we had a day out, driving to Duxford just outside Cambridge to visit the Imperial War Museum.  Duxford is an operating airfield, and an aircraft museum displaying everything from WW II fighter planes to airliners, but focusing on British ones.  There is one display hall devoted to American aircraft as well.  There were hundreds of people there for the day, and there was continuous activity in the sky as all sorts of historic aircraft took off and landed, or buzzed the airfield at low altitude.  It was like a mini airshow.  You could pay to have a ride in some of them, but we didn't.

It was a nice day, although a bit blustery.

I know of many of these old aircraft, but found that up close they are generally much larger than I had imagined.  Those on display here are ingeniously packed into several large halls with their wings cunningly intertwined like a huge jigsaw puzzle.  They are several layers deep with the smaller ones under the big ones or suspended from the ceiling on wires.

The Lancaster bomber.

When I was growing up there was always a photo in our home of a Lancaster bomber with a couple of hundred men lined up on its wings and on the ground for a group photo, taken during World War II of the New Zealand Squadron 75 which was based in England.  Somewhere in that photo was my uncle Gerry (Gerald) who flew in one of these bombers over Germany, as the wireless operator.  He took part in night raids over Germany, when sometimes over a thousand bombers at once would conduct raids on German cities.  It was very interesting to see a real Lancaster bomber up close.

This is the nose of the Concorde.

They also have one of the few surviving Concordes, the supersonic English/French airliner which operated for 27 years between Europe and the USA until economics, noise complaints, and a disastrous accident ended its career about 2003.  Today there are still no supersonic airliners.

Sue below the engine exhausts.

Inside.  This was a test Concorde, fitted with test equipment and fewer seats.

The cockpit - not complicated at all.

My father was stationed in Noumea for part of the war, where as a technician he serviced and repaired the radio equipment on the aircraft operating there.  One he told us about was the Catalina flying boat, able to land on water or land.  He remembered feeling seasick having to work inside these planes in the 40 degree heat while they slopped about at anchor smelling of oil and kerosene.  I assembled a kitset model of one, so I knew what it looked like.  Today I saw a real one for the first time, which was quite exciting.  They are a weird looking aircraft.

The Catalina.

Duxford also has a larger Sunderland Flying Boat on display, which I believe were among the first aircraft to fly to New Zealand as commercial airlines, landing on Auckland Harbour at Hobsonville, from about 1940.  I see that today there is a new housing development at Hobsonville called "Sunderland".

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Cambridge

We've found Cambridge a very interesting town, with lots to see and busy with students and tourists everywhere.  The university system is very different to our NZ one, there being 31 colleges here in Cambridge and each one basically a little university in its own right.  Generally students at these colleges also live at them, and each one may teach a full range of subjects.  Trinity College is the largest, and is a very wealthy college, owning over a billion pounds worth of property and assets.  It is among the largest landowners in Britain.

We visited the main museum, the Fitzwilliam.  Here are a few photos from there:

A decimal clock.  Ten hours per day, ten minutes per hour.  The small face within is a normal 24 hour clock.

A fabulous nautilus shell.

This huge slab is the lid of an Egyptian sarcophagus.

A face from the decoration on a 3000 year old Egyptian coffin.

Yes, that is a man busking from inside a rubbish bin.

The autumn leaves are starting to gather on the ground in thick layers.

 We bought our tickets for a punt on the river Cam on Monday, where it was much quieter than the previous weekend days.  Your punt-man propels you up and down a stretch of the river which takes you past many of the famous colleges - Trinity College, Kings College, Queens College, etc.  These all back onto the river and their properties extend across to the the land on the other side, so most have their own bridges across.  Cam-bridge == Cambridge.

A quiet day for punting on the river Cam.

Our punting guide, Ben, a student.  We are passing under the Bridge of Sighs.

This is called the "Mathematical Bridge", made from wood.

 Next on the agenda was a look inside one of the colleges, in our case Kings College.  You buy a ticket, and are then allowed to wander through the chapel and around the grounds (but NOT on the grass).

Inside Kings Chapel.

The famous vaulted ceiling, 40 metres above.

A trumpeting angel.

Amateur and professional punters going in all directions.

 If you prefer you can hire a boat without a guide, and propel yourself down the river.  Judging by the efforts of those we watched, this is not as simple as it might appear.  On this quiet Monday in October there were plenty of near misses, so in July and August when the town is packed with tourists it must be chaotic!

A side view of Kings Chapel, across the immaculate lawn.

 I loved this amazing mechanical clock - the "Corpus Clock".  The alien-looking beast on top (the "Chronophage" or time-eater) walks atop the turning second wheel, occasionally blinking and yawning. I will try and put up a video of it to show it working (actually of course Youtube has it already, for example this video ).

The Corpus Clock and Chronophage.

 We also checked out the Sedgwick Earth Sciences museum, since we are now amateur ammonite enthusiasts.  It is full of fossils of all ages from around Britain and the world, including some big dinosaur skeletons.

Sue blissfully unaware of the danger!

Thousands of catalogued items of every type and size.

These ones were quite like our own little ammonite.

Glad these spiders are now extinct!

Cambridge is flat, and there are bikes everywhere,

Sue contemplates a wardrobe update.

It would have been nice to have a few more bright days, to give more life to our photos!  But it has been quite warm, with just occasional rain.  Not bad overall.

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Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park is a property on the edge of Milton Keynes which was the home of an ultra-secret British code breaking organisation during World War II.  Alan Turing was probably the most famous person associated with this place, and his story was turned into the film "The Imitation Game" (2014) starring Benedict Cumberbatch.  Today they have recreated much of the original setup of Bletchley Park and turned it into a tourist attraction, including modern displays about encryption and protecting your personal data online and the like.

Bletchley House, the original grand house, viewed across the lake.

 The Germans used an "Enigma" machine to encrypt all their communications.  The machine itself was fairly well known and had been used before the war.  The problem was that it could encode messages in over a billion different ways, so the British needed to work out what settings were being used each day.  Even after they learned to break the code they had to keep doing it again every day, because every day the Germans changed the code.

The German Enigma machine, thousands of which were used by the Germans to encrypt messages.

 The British secret weapon was the "Bombe" machine they developed, which was sort of primitive computer which could run through a huge number of possible combinations in a short time.  The one pictured here is a faithful replica built from scratch over 13 years, finishing in 2009.  All the originals were destroyed to maintain secrecy after the war.

This replica is a fully operational one, and they run it every 15 minutes every day to demonstrate it to visitors.  All these wheels spin, at various speeds, until the machine detects a possible solution to the day's code.  It may have to be run numerous times before the correct answer is found, but it massively reduces the number of combinations which have to be checked by hand.  It is much more entertaining to watch than a modern computer!

The British "Bombe" machine, which helped break the Enigma codes.

Around the back of the machine, some of the whirring cogs and shafts.  Also an elaborate oiling system!

Some of the relays which trip to capture the correct solution.

The top wheels spin twice per second; the second row step once in 13 seconds, and the last row once in 5 minutes.

A man warned us there had been a "pecking incident" yesterday - keep a safe distance!

It was very pleasant looking around the park and gardens, and through the main house.  It seemed quite well run, and they are working to raise money and restore more of the 1940's buildings.

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Oxford

In Oxford we stayed in one of the colleges - Lady Margaret Hall - in the student accommodation.  That was a bit of a reminder of how soft we have become since we were at university.  We did have a bathroom, but it was slightly smaller than an aircraft toilet but still managed to include a shower!  We had a quieter time in Oxford, because Sue was attending a conference there.

Outside the porter's lodge (gate house) of Lady Margaret Hall.

The breakfast (dining) room was a bit quiet with all the students on holiday.

Part of the Lady Margaret grounds.  The brown lawn is infected with a grub, and also being dug up by badgers and moles.

There are nice big parks nearby.

Autumn colour.

The Bridge of Sighs - a replica of the original in Venice.

Ready for dinner at The Crown.  They say Shakespeare used to stop here.

And this was where J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis used to drink!

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Zoe's Birthday Party

Today we were invited to Zoe's birthday party.  She turned three.  Marilyn is here too, having a month in England catching up with her boys (men) and their families, and fitting in some walking in Cornwall.  We met them at "Oxygen Freejumping" which turned out to be a large indoor space filled with trampolines and dozens of shrieking children.

Trampolines everywhere, and a lot of yelling.

Mally, Zoe and friends preparing the cake for candle-lighting.

Sue, Marilyn, Stephen, Ivana, and Kieren in the beer garden.

After and hour of trampolining followed by the blowing out of the candles and the cutting of the cake, we all retired to the Duke of Kent pub down the road, which has a large beer garden out the back which include a children's playground.  Perfect for everyone, in other words.

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Lyme Regis to Uxbridge

We had a fairly long drive today, from Lyme Regis to Uxbridge, on the outskirts of London.  The traffic was fairly bad even for London, I think, with big queues even on major roads, and our satnav changed our route several times to try and avoid gridlocked traffic. Uxbridge is fairly close to where Kieren and Mally live, so it will be easy to get to Zoe's party tomorrow from here.

Halfway to London we stopped to revisit Stonehenge, having last been there in 2004 with Lisa and James.  They have completely altered the nearby roads and built a large new visitors' centre about 2 km away.  Now you have to park at the visitors' centre, buy your ticket and take a shuttle bus to Stonehenge itself.  I noticed that Google maps still shows the now-disappeared road, so it must have happened fairly recently.  We had a nice sunny day, similar to the last time 13 years ago.

Found a gap in the crowds to take a photo.

Stonehenge, still impressive.  The big stones are 4 metres high and weight about 25 tonnes.

Hmmm, coffee and mobility scooters together.  Perfect for my old age.

Salisbury Cathedral.

Salisbury cathedral was consecrated over 750 years ago, and has the tallest spire in Britain, at 123 metres.  The huge font (below) is filled with absolutely still water, forming a mirror surface.

The perfect mirror surface of the water in the Salisbury Cathedral font.

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