advice upcoming visit to Bletchley Park / comp museum

[Dave Wade]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctech <cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Fred Cisin via
> cctech
> Sent: 06 July 2019 21:21
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts <cctech at classiccmp.org>
> Subject: RE: advice upcoming visit to Bletchley Park / comp museum
> 
> On Sat, 6 Jul 2019, Dave Wade via cctech wrote:
> > However, the route involves the M25 via Heathrow and that has frequent
> > blockages so IMHO it’s a risky option.
> 
> I've never been there, so have no first-hand knowledge.  But, "Good
> Omens"
> by Pratchett and Gaiman says,
> "Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as
> evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever
> students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is
> generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A."
> 
> Is it really that bad?
> 

IMHO even worse. Its 177 miles of motorway which is the usual way to get around London. As usual it was built as cheaply as possible so originally was only three lanes in each direction.
These days its mostly 4 lanes, but that meant removing the hard shoulder and replacing it with spaced refuges. I would say its never without an incident somewhere along its length. 
The stretch around Heathrow where the M40 and M4 join is especially bad. I can see on the "trafficengland" web page

http://www.trafficengland.com/

that even though its 9.30PM there is currently one reported incident with a lane closed on the stretch approaching Heathrow from the south (so Gatwick)

> It would seem like the museum would be justification for an extra day on the
> trip.
> 

If you really want to do justice to Bletchley you need two days. The Bletchley Park Museum which has lots of information about code breaking and also the Amateur Radio station needs 3 or 4 hours to do it justice..
They have several encryption machines including Enigma. However what for me is the interesting hardware, so the Turing Welchman Bombe re-build and Tommy Flower's Colossus re-build are at TNMOC which is a separate museum on a separate part of the site. That’s where I usually go (But I am on the Members Club committee). That is imho also worth the best part of a day to visit.

If you want to visit TNMOC you go past the entrance to the Bletchly Park Trust entrance and drive up the side to the TNMOC. The security man will usually guide you.


> (When we went to the National Auto Museum that had been built out of the
> remains of the Harrah's Club Collection, we kept it open ended.)
> 
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com

Dave