Codeshare: my trip to Bletchley Park
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Skyring
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Normally I'd take some shots of my own, but for some reason I didn't and after a little while it was all cluttered with cables and rechargers and so on. As I recall, there was either no lip at all, or one of modest proportions, just enough to stop the water getting out. Not that this was a problem with the shower cubicle being rather long with the getting in end and the shower end about two metres or more apart.
Skyring
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I'm getting to that point. Some of these quaint old AirBnBs don't run to lifts. This one had about twenty steps up.
Skyring
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Just got to remember to keep using the same credit card all the time. I have three in my wallet, and while they all work with the system, they do not make for efficient use of resources if used haphazardly. Looking at my accounts, two trips to and from Heathrow and two days of gadding about on the Tube worked out to about AUD150 plus international transaction fees. Cheaper than taxis or hiring a car, and certainly worth a lot for the reduction in stress that forren public transport always brings, but still …
Skyring
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Bletchley by Bus
I had been keeping my BookCrossing friends informed of my movements. Others were coming in from North America and all over Europe, and if there was a chance of sharing a journey with a mate, I was all for it. It didn't work out, but the Whatsapp channel was full of little bulletins from those arriving. The luggage saga was also being broadcast. There were all sorts of little gifties in my bag and if it didn't arrive there would be some long faces and it wasn't my fault!
Good news on that front. My bag had bypassed Manila and was in the same land as I. I obsessively checked the location during the day. More on this later.
Coffee!
My Delter coffee press was in my baggage, so I couldn't make my own, not unless I settled for some horrid instant brew, but luckily there was a Starbucks only a few metres away and they opened at 0730.
I told the lady barista that she had just saved a life and that there was a Facebook group devoted to the collectible mugs. She was fascinated. As, indeed, am I.
In fact, Routebear in the photo above is perched on the handy little cardboard travel box that the Manila Starbucks mug came in. And under that is the flat cardboard amenity kit Oman Air gave me with nothing terribly exciting or exotic in it. If my bag didn't arrive, though, the socks might come in handy.
On that note, the bus group for Bletchley assembled at 0945 on the other side of Verulamium Park, a fifteen minute stroll away. I could squeeze in a few errands before then.
Up to the Premier Inn at the other end of the market place, to check in with the BookCrossers who were staying there and let the staff know that Qantas might drop off a bag of mine in the next week or so.
Stop by a chemist for more headache tablets (this may have some relation to the bag business).
Rummage through any opshops opening at nine. I needed a wide-brimmed hat, some walking shoes, and anything else that looked good. Preferably a t-shirt bearing the logo of a marathon – any marathon – from several years back that I could wear without comment.
Marks and Spencers opened at eight, and I got some fresh undies, a poloshirt, and a lovely soft cotton tee.
Oxfam had a ridiculously wide-brimmed floppy hat for a couple of quid that I bought and days later accidentally on purpose left behind in the unit.
Not as ridiculous as the even wider-brimmed floppy hat adorned with flowers that my mate Janice found in Cancer Research when I looked in there and found her browsing the bookshelves on my behalf.
Janice is a BookCrossing mate I first met in New Zealand when we both attended the Christchurch convention in 2009. She lives in a quintessentially charming English village, knows everybody in it, has an MBE, keeps chooks, is delightfully mad, is amazingly wonderful with kids, and I love her utterly.
I slipped away to my digs, changed into my new purchases, hastily threw a fresh powerbank and an Oman Air waterbottle into my now lightened backpack, and galloped off to the meeting point as fast as my flight slip-ons and fresh socks would allow.
The BookCrossers, at least the earlybirds, as the convention itself didn't start until Friday evening, and it was now Thursday, were assembled beside the bus, with people checking off names against a list, swapping hugs etc.
Every convention is different. The regulars, the newbies, those who can make it from the other side of the world, those who can get time off from work. We all know each other from past events and the various forums, but massive in-person gatherings are rare.
It was a half hour or so on the bus, and we chattered all the way. Normally there's a pre-convention tour of various local attractions, wineries, lunch at some convenient spot, a tour of a mansion, bookshops, whatnot.
This time there was just one destination – Bletchley Park – and straight back.
Bletchley Park, for those not full-bottle on history, is where the UK gathered its codebreakers during WW2 and set them – among other things – to the task of breaking the German codes, focused on the fiendishly complex Enigma machines.
The country home of Sir Herbert Leon, it was purchased in 1938 by the government when Sir Herbert and his wife died, as a suitable location for the government code school away from London and expected bombing attacks. Almost from the moment of purchase the estate began accumulating extra office accommodation in the form of wooden huts and brick blocks where the eventual 9 000-strong mainly female workforce shared three eight-hour shifts a day. Nobody actually lived there; everyone was billeted in the homes of locals.
Post-war, the place was used by various government and private groups, with many of the buildings falling into disrepair. There was no public recognition of the historic value of the site, as every worker there had signed the Official Secrets Act and, even decades later, most did not discuss what they had done there.
In fact, this devotion to secrecy, not just of the thousands who passed through Bletchley Park, but the locals who may not have known the details but surely knew that something important was taking place in the old Leon property, is one of the astonishing details of the enterprise.
As the story became public knowledge beginning in the mid-70s, a push to restore the buildings and honour the workers gained momentum and the site is now a museum on a grand scale.
Most of us had signed up for a guided tour and we had a couple of hours to have a quick meal, look through some of the displays, and browse the gift shop.
An extremely well-stocked gift shop, I might say, with some pertinent souvenirs, especially guidebooks and reference works. And novels; the romantic possibilities of thousands of young women in close proximity to a few men have not escaped the eye of fiction writers.
I seized the chance to buy a flat woollen hat. It might not protect my ravaged ears from future skin cancers, but it is comfortable in a way that my more usual headgear is not.
Fortified by a ham hock and salad sandwich washed down by a very welcome English cider, I looked through the various displays and even the old mansion – a hideously ugly pile – before gathering with the rest of the group for a tour led by a young lady who hadn't actually worked there, but knew quite a few of those who had. The most recent veterans' reunion managed three attendees, down from thirteen the previous year and hundreds in earlier years. No repointing and restoring aging woodwork can save these folk, I'm afraid.
BookCrossers are 90% female, it must be said, so there was a deal of sympathy for the wall of photographs in one building that showed platoons of young women labouring over various machines, desks covered with file cards, translating messages and so on, with "over in the corner you can see two men chatting to one another."
It was a brilliant day, clear and hot, and I was grateful for the protection offered by my own hideously ugly floppy hat of which no photographs have survived. In front of the old mansion, lawns, a lake, huge old trees and deckchairs gave welcome relief. It was easy to imagine off-duty cryptographers soaking up some much-needed Vitamin D before commencing another eight-hour shift in some cramped wooden hut.
The work done by those people is generally acknowledged to have shortened the war by at least two years and in the process saved millions of lives – and many of those would have been German and Japanese as well as Allied.
Italian and Japanese codes were broken here as well, and one of the no-longer-secrets that doesn't get quite so much coverage is that post war, many other nations began using Enigma or similar machines for their private correspondence and the British and Americans happily read that traffic as well.
It was a massive thrill to look into Alan Turing's recreated office, complete with tea mug padlocked to the radiator, where this eccentric genius had worked. In fact the whole museum complex was incredibly interesting. It is not too far a stretch to say that the age of computers began here, with the electromechanical "bombes" that used cribbed phrases to determine the day's code settings, and later the vacuum tubes and punched paper tape of the "Colossus" device that worked even faster.
Every vestige of these machines, every scrap of paper, every hint of the work done here was destroyed after the war. The whole establishment became rather plain and uncomfortable empty offices.
I wish I could go back and see more. Alas, we were herded back onto the bus and set off back to St Albans.
I'd been tracking my bag, watching as it made its way out of Heathrow in a van, stopping here and there. Eventually I received a call from the driver, letting me know that it was delivered.
One last hurdle to climb. I had to fill in a customs declaration form sent to me by the UK Border Force. A PDF form. On my phone on a bus.
Hmmm. I have the Claude AI app installed on my phone. I copied the PDF file in, supplied a few answers to questions, and Claude was able to fill in the fields neatly, even adding in some answers off its own bat, given that I gave it access to my Gmail and it has all my secrets. Claude pumped out a completed PDF file and I sent that off to HM Government.
Once the bus arrived in St Albans, I shot off to the Premier Inn as fast as I could shuffle in my slippery footwear, retreived my big green rolling duffel, and wheeled it happily home. Over the cobblestones, slowly and as quietly as I could manage.
I was able to put a load of laundry on in my AirBnB – one of the main reasons I choose such places over hotels – unpack, put on some fresh clobber, and walk over parkland down to "Ye Olde Fighting coughs Inn", where I had a meal of solid pub grub in the beer garden with a couple of German friends who had also been on the tour.
And then I floated home – in comfortable high-stack Brooks running shoes – past the glorious old cathedral that transforms this town into an official English city, set the washing machine to "dry", and tumbled into bed with the benefit of sleeping attire.
I had been keeping my BookCrossing friends informed of my movements. Others were coming in from North America and all over Europe, and if there was a chance of sharing a journey with a mate, I was all for it. It didn't work out, but the Whatsapp channel was full of little bulletins from those arriving. The luggage saga was also being broadcast. There were all sorts of little gifties in my bag and if it didn't arrive there would be some long faces and it wasn't my fault!
Good news on that front. My bag had bypassed Manila and was in the same land as I. I obsessively checked the location during the day. More on this later.
Coffee!
My Delter coffee press was in my baggage, so I couldn't make my own, not unless I settled for some horrid instant brew, but luckily there was a Starbucks only a few metres away and they opened at 0730.
I told the lady barista that she had just saved a life and that there was a Facebook group devoted to the collectible mugs. She was fascinated. As, indeed, am I.
In fact, Routebear in the photo above is perched on the handy little cardboard travel box that the Manila Starbucks mug came in. And under that is the flat cardboard amenity kit Oman Air gave me with nothing terribly exciting or exotic in it. If my bag didn't arrive, though, the socks might come in handy.
On that note, the bus group for Bletchley assembled at 0945 on the other side of Verulamium Park, a fifteen minute stroll away. I could squeeze in a few errands before then.
Up to the Premier Inn at the other end of the market place, to check in with the BookCrossers who were staying there and let the staff know that Qantas might drop off a bag of mine in the next week or so.
Stop by a chemist for more headache tablets (this may have some relation to the bag business).
Rummage through any opshops opening at nine. I needed a wide-brimmed hat, some walking shoes, and anything else that looked good. Preferably a t-shirt bearing the logo of a marathon – any marathon – from several years back that I could wear without comment.
Marks and Spencers opened at eight, and I got some fresh undies, a poloshirt, and a lovely soft cotton tee.
Oxfam had a ridiculously wide-brimmed floppy hat for a couple of quid that I bought and days later accidentally on purpose left behind in the unit.
Not as ridiculous as the even wider-brimmed floppy hat adorned with flowers that my mate Janice found in Cancer Research when I looked in there and found her browsing the bookshelves on my behalf.
Janice is a BookCrossing mate I first met in New Zealand when we both attended the Christchurch convention in 2009. She lives in a quintessentially charming English village, knows everybody in it, has an MBE, keeps chooks, is delightfully mad, is amazingly wonderful with kids, and I love her utterly.
I slipped away to my digs, changed into my new purchases, hastily threw a fresh powerbank and an Oman Air waterbottle into my now lightened backpack, and galloped off to the meeting point as fast as my flight slip-ons and fresh socks would allow.
The BookCrossers, at least the earlybirds, as the convention itself didn't start until Friday evening, and it was now Thursday, were assembled beside the bus, with people checking off names against a list, swapping hugs etc.
Every convention is different. The regulars, the newbies, those who can make it from the other side of the world, those who can get time off from work. We all know each other from past events and the various forums, but massive in-person gatherings are rare.
It was a half hour or so on the bus, and we chattered all the way. Normally there's a pre-convention tour of various local attractions, wineries, lunch at some convenient spot, a tour of a mansion, bookshops, whatnot.
This time there was just one destination – Bletchley Park – and straight back.
Bletchley Park, for those not full-bottle on history, is where the UK gathered its codebreakers during WW2 and set them – among other things – to the task of breaking the German codes, focused on the fiendishly complex Enigma machines.
The country home of Sir Herbert Leon, it was purchased in 1938 by the government when Sir Herbert and his wife died, as a suitable location for the government code school away from London and expected bombing attacks. Almost from the moment of purchase the estate began accumulating extra office accommodation in the form of wooden huts and brick blocks where the eventual 9 000-strong mainly female workforce shared three eight-hour shifts a day. Nobody actually lived there; everyone was billeted in the homes of locals.
Post-war, the place was used by various government and private groups, with many of the buildings falling into disrepair. There was no public recognition of the historic value of the site, as every worker there had signed the Official Secrets Act and, even decades later, most did not discuss what they had done there.
In fact, this devotion to secrecy, not just of the thousands who passed through Bletchley Park, but the locals who may not have known the details but surely knew that something important was taking place in the old Leon property, is one of the astonishing details of the enterprise.
As the story became public knowledge beginning in the mid-70s, a push to restore the buildings and honour the workers gained momentum and the site is now a museum on a grand scale.
Most of us had signed up for a guided tour and we had a couple of hours to have a quick meal, look through some of the displays, and browse the gift shop.
An extremely well-stocked gift shop, I might say, with some pertinent souvenirs, especially guidebooks and reference works. And novels; the romantic possibilities of thousands of young women in close proximity to a few men have not escaped the eye of fiction writers.
I seized the chance to buy a flat woollen hat. It might not protect my ravaged ears from future skin cancers, but it is comfortable in a way that my more usual headgear is not.
Fortified by a ham hock and salad sandwich washed down by a very welcome English cider, I looked through the various displays and even the old mansion – a hideously ugly pile – before gathering with the rest of the group for a tour led by a young lady who hadn't actually worked there, but knew quite a few of those who had. The most recent veterans' reunion managed three attendees, down from thirteen the previous year and hundreds in earlier years. No repointing and restoring aging woodwork can save these folk, I'm afraid.
BookCrossers are 90% female, it must be said, so there was a deal of sympathy for the wall of photographs in one building that showed platoons of young women labouring over various machines, desks covered with file cards, translating messages and so on, with "over in the corner you can see two men chatting to one another."
It was a brilliant day, clear and hot, and I was grateful for the protection offered by my own hideously ugly floppy hat of which no photographs have survived. In front of the old mansion, lawns, a lake, huge old trees and deckchairs gave welcome relief. It was easy to imagine off-duty cryptographers soaking up some much-needed Vitamin D before commencing another eight-hour shift in some cramped wooden hut.
The work done by those people is generally acknowledged to have shortened the war by at least two years and in the process saved millions of lives – and many of those would have been German and Japanese as well as Allied.
Italian and Japanese codes were broken here as well, and one of the no-longer-secrets that doesn't get quite so much coverage is that post war, many other nations began using Enigma or similar machines for their private correspondence and the British and Americans happily read that traffic as well.
It was a massive thrill to look into Alan Turing's recreated office, complete with tea mug padlocked to the radiator, where this eccentric genius had worked. In fact the whole museum complex was incredibly interesting. It is not too far a stretch to say that the age of computers began here, with the electromechanical "bombes" that used cribbed phrases to determine the day's code settings, and later the vacuum tubes and punched paper tape of the "Colossus" device that worked even faster.
Every vestige of these machines, every scrap of paper, every hint of the work done here was destroyed after the war. The whole establishment became rather plain and uncomfortable empty offices.
I wish I could go back and see more. Alas, we were herded back onto the bus and set off back to St Albans.
I'd been tracking my bag, watching as it made its way out of Heathrow in a van, stopping here and there. Eventually I received a call from the driver, letting me know that it was delivered.
One last hurdle to climb. I had to fill in a customs declaration form sent to me by the UK Border Force. A PDF form. On my phone on a bus.
Hmmm. I have the Claude AI app installed on my phone. I copied the PDF file in, supplied a few answers to questions, and Claude was able to fill in the fields neatly, even adding in some answers off its own bat, given that I gave it access to my Gmail and it has all my secrets. Claude pumped out a completed PDF file and I sent that off to HM Government.
Once the bus arrived in St Albans, I shot off to the Premier Inn as fast as I could shuffle in my slippery footwear, retreived my big green rolling duffel, and wheeled it happily home. Over the cobblestones, slowly and as quietly as I could manage.
I was able to put a load of laundry on in my AirBnB – one of the main reasons I choose such places over hotels – unpack, put on some fresh clobber, and walk over parkland down to "Ye Olde Fighting coughs Inn", where I had a meal of solid pub grub in the beer garden with a couple of German friends who had also been on the tour.
And then I floated home – in comfortable high-stack Brooks running shoes – past the glorious old cathedral that transforms this town into an official English city, set the washing machine to "dry", and tumbled into bed with the benefit of sleeping attire.
Last edited:
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Sorry to interrupt this excellent TR, but did you mean 10K? I'm into WY at the moment and I was in row 10 recently MCT-LHR, directly behind the Business Studio (and I agree not worth bidding for).
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and if you're into hot chocolate Knoops below you are great
Skyring
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I had noted the rave reviews, and indeed it looked good. But I was after caffeine, mostly. To tell the truth, I was absolutely surrounded by places to eat and drink and if I'd had a sip and a morsel at all of them I'd be twice the man I am today. It took quite a bit of willpower to walk past some of these eateries and the tempting aromas wafting out into the street.
Skyring
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14K it was. The other plane equipped with the comfier seats must have a different numbering system. TBH, I was kind of hoping that one of my flights might have mapped into these seats, or beeped happily with an upgrade, but no …
Not to worry, I was comfortable enough. Lying flat for a sleep instead of being tortured in Y is what I pay the money for.
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Interesting. Might be a 1-off in their fleet. All the seat maps (Aerolopa and seatmaps.com) have row 10 behind Biz studio. Good to keep an eye out for next time I'm trying to select the front row of J!
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