It's probably one of the most important sites in terms of WW2, Computing, Cryptography and womens' equality- although it wasn't really intentional- in the whole of the UK. Maybe the world!
The day didn't get off to the very best of starts- Traff was driving off to Cardiff so he offered me a lift to Milton Keynes but neglected to mention that it would be at 8am- I ended up in Bletchley at 8:30am with 2 hours to kill.
Knowing my love of cemeteries Traff found one to leave me in.
I had a mooch around in the sunshine and a walk around Bletchley until about 10:00, then I went and sat in the entrance of the visitor centre with a cuppa- I was asked no less than 3 times if I was OK by the very caring staff. Very embarrassing.
My mum eventually arrived- and we spent the first 30 minutes of the day drinking even more tea and putting the world to rights.
We had a really good look around the site at all of the exhibitions and buildings. I knew that the Enigma machine was German and that our cracking it's codes ended the war, but I didn't realise quite how true that was.
I didn't realise how many people were involved.
Probably because all the people involved- which was thousands- were all bound by the official secrets acts until very recently so they've never been able to discuss their work, or be rewarded or acknowledged for it.
We saw the Enigma machines and the bombe machine for cracking codes produced by it. It's huge! even the enigma machines were huge! they were designed to be "portable".
They also have some Nazi flags, equipment and books. I don't think I've ever seen any genuine Nazi artefacts before. they're so taboo.
I'm not really sure how I felt about them to be honest.
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