Bletchley Park
On Saturday
22nd of April a group of ladies joined a Jay & Kay coach tour to
Bletchley Park, Home of the Codebreakers.
After a
pleasant journey with a jolly coach driver we arrived at about 11.30am. We were
greeted and shown into the visitor centre where we were given a map and saw an
introductory exhibition about Bletchley. I think many of us were surprized by the size
of the site, there is the visitor centre, museum, the Mansion and 12 huts, many
of which have been restored to how they were during the war.
Hut 8 was
home to the office of Alun Turing the famous code breaker. His office with his
desk and typewriter was like stepping back in time, you can even see his enamel
mug that he kept chained to the radiator! By all accounts he was a genius and
just a little bit eccentric.
In the
Museum in block B we saw the Cipher machines used by Hitler and learnt how the
code breakers devised the first computer to decipher the codes from the Enigma
machines.
Some ladies
took a guided tour of the site which was very interesting and gave us an
insight into what life would have been like working there during the war
We returned
to the coach at 4pm in awe of the work that took place at Bletchley. The
thousands of men and women who worked there listening to Morse code messages
day and night, the people who built the machines and the mathematicians who
cracked the codes, all working in total secrecy none of them even knowing what
the people in the next Hut to them were doing. Amazing.
And as out
tickets are valid for a year I’m sure that some ladies will be returning to
Bletchley Park to see all the bits we missed the first time around.
