Brucato's Go Museum Hopping!: A Code Breaking Kind of Day!

Friday, 22 February 2013

Hello!

Well…woke up this morning, and I am definitely having some sort of allergy problem; I’ve got some pretty nasty hives on my arm. My only question, though, is WHAT am I allergic to? I’m thinking it may be from the detergent we used in the flat in London. If that’s the case, I could be in for some interesting times…or, possibly my new cashmere sweater, but if that were the case, I don’t think I’d be having an all-over reaction…I did pick up a cream to help the itching at the pharmacy, and I’ve got some fairly strong antihistamines, so we’ll see what happens…maybe I’m allergic to COLD!

Bletchley Park

Up about 7 this morning, and put a load of wash into the super-washer upstairs here. As always, there were no instructions, so it was, again, pretty much guesswork as to where exactly the detergent was to go…oh well! At any rate, laundry was done about 8:30 a.m., we hung it up to dry, and out we were and heading to Bletchley Park.

Bletchley Park - the Main House

Bletchley Park was in operation from the late 1930’s as the British center for decrypting and decoding enemy messages. We visited here last spring, when we were staying with Phil and Dan, and it was an amazing place. Robert had read the book Codebreakers and many of the activities in the book had taken place there; it was also the home of the first modern computer. So…we got there about 10:30 a.m. and, boy, was it freezing out! There were some snow flurries while we were getting settled in the car in Bibury, but fortunately, while the temperature hovered around freezing, there weren’t any icy patches that we found on the roads.

Enigma Cipher Machine

The Bombe - Used to crack Enigma intercepts

We were able to get a guided tour, which walked around some of the various buildings on the property – there is a Victorian manor house, but by the end of WWII, there were over 10,000 staff members working there – in everything from brick buildings to some very ramshackle wooden “temporary” huts – which are still there. We heard about how the British (with some help from Polish mathematicians) cracked the Enigma machine code that was used by the Nazis throughout the war (the Germans were supremely confident that the Enigma system could not be broken), and then the Colossus machine, the first programmable computer, that was used to crack yet another, much more complicated code used by Germany in WWII. The only problem with the tour was that it kept going outside where it was truly incredibly miserable! After the tour was over, we were able to walk around the buildings and read up on the different displays – we learned all about the pigeons that were used as messengers – but apparently the Germans were also using pigeons, and then each side was trying to shoot down the poor birds or get them with specially trained hawks! We learned about the mathematicians and linguists who were recruited for war work – and sworn to secrecy; not even their families were allowed to know! Some of the story did not see the light of day for 30 years or more. There were also actual working models of the Enigma decoding machines, which Robert found fascinating. All in all, a great day had by all!

Cottage with Thatched Roof

On the way back to Bibury, we drove through several villages that had multiple thatched roof houses – so I made Robert get out into the freezing cold to take some pictures. We got back to Bibury around 5 p.m. and decided, as we hadn’t had any lunch, to see if we could get something at the Bibury Court Hotel, just down the road from the cottage. We have stayed there many times over the past 25 years, and it is really a lovely place! Robert ordered some tea, considering the temperature outside, and we both had glasses of champagne. The kitchen even rustled up some sandwiches (crusts removed, of course) for us – ham and cheese for me, and salmon and cream cheese for Robert. Then back to the cottage for a nice quiet and WARM evening in front of the fire! We are definitely going to have to go back there for a future stay!