We loved travelling during Easter as we usually have a 10-day break. However, we decided to use this short break to rest but not at home and we decided to go to Milton Keynes, north of London, to rest and to visit Bletchley Park, the home of the codebreakers.
We have been trying to go to Bletchley Park since we saw Benedict Cumberbatch on the movie version on Alan Turin on “The Imitation Game” (2014) based on the codebreaking of the enigma machine. However, since the place is outside London this requires a bit more planning that just picking up the luggage.
Therefore, we decided to have a short break on Easter and the perfect place was to go to Milton Keynes and spend the entire weekend visiting all the exhibitions of Bletchley Park, as I wanted to have enough time to visit the site and enjoy every single exhibition including the offsite National Museum of Computing. We manage to book the hotel a week before and since it was a local trip it required minimal preparation, and by 30th March we were ready for our 4-day break. However, before leaving I wanted to have a bit more knowledge about the place.
Bletchley Park was brought in 1938 by Sir Hugh Sinclair, head of the Secret Intelligence Service (currently known as MI6), for use by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and SIS in case of a war happened. This site was ideal due to its links between Oxford and Cambridge where most of the codebreakers resided, and had good links of communication with London, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh.
Bletchley Park hosted the GC&CS during World War II and it was here where Alan Turing and his team developed an electromechanical machine called “The Bombe” to break the code of the German Enigma machine.
Bletchley Park recruited many women with higher degrees held in the areas of mathematic, physics and engineering, as they were allowed to study STEM subjects because most men were sent to war. They also recruited women with a background in languages like French, German, Italian and Japanese to work as translators.
Bletchley Park staff were bound by the Official Secrets Act of 1939 and during 1942 security warning emphasised to be discrete even within Bletchley itself and to remember: “Do not talk at meals, do not talk in the transport, do not talk travelling, do not talk in the billet, be careful even in your hut…”. Even after the war the secrecy imposed remained in force so much that even their families do not know about their work. This change with the publication of F.W. Winterbotham’s The Ultra Secret (1974) where discussion of the work done at Bletchley started and in July 2009 the British government declared that their personnel would be recognised with a commemorative badge and an amazing memorial.
For many years after the war Bletchley Park was used by different organisations but by 1991 the site was nearly empty and at risk of demolition. In February 1992, the Milton Keynes Borough declared Bletchley Park a conservation area and the Bletchley Park Trust was formed to keep the site and create a museum. After this research, I was a bit readier to start my trip.
On 30th March, we left the house around 11.00 in the morning and stopped in the McDonalds for lunch. After this, we started our journey towards Milton Keynes but I took us more than three hours to arrive, as it was Easter Friday and all London was leaving for holiday. On the way, there were many incidents from car broken down on the middle of the road to lanes closure, making our short trip a bit longer.
We finally arrived to the hotel around 16.00, we checked in and then we went to the hotel room. The hotel was built surrounding the MK Dons Football stadium and there are only two entrances at the middle of the pitch, one on each side. However, our room was behind one of the goal post and for this we had to walk a lot. Once at the hotel room, we rested and we made reservations for dinner at an amazing restaurant from Marco Pierre White “Steakhouse, Bar & Grill” for 19.30.
After resting for about couple of hours, we were fully refreshed and we set on our way towards the restaurant. We had an amazing dinner, starting with refreshing cocktail and crispy calamari, followed by a roast chateaubriand, and finally lattes with two amazing desserts a Cambridge burnt cream and a bake vanilla cheesecake with berries. This was a night to remember as the food was delicious but the company was better. After this, we returned to the room to prepare for an exciting day at Bletchley Park.
On 31st March, we left our bedroom at around 10.00 and headed to the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast. The view of our table was of the inside of the empty MK Dons football stadium. We found out that the next game was the Monday that we were leaving. We enjoyed an amazing breakfast buffet.
After breakfast, we decided to explore the hotel. On the second floor of the hotel was the access of the lower sitting levels of the stadium and we took a lot of photographs, as this was the closes we will ever be to enter the stadium since we do not live in Milton Keynes.
At around 12.00, we made our way to Bletchley Park. The trip was less than 10 minutes and then the next task was to find parking. Luckily, we parked on a safe place and made our way down to the entrance, where there was a moderate queue for buying tickets. These tickets, are season tickets, which allows the person to re-enter 11 times within a year without paying for another ticket. Therefore, we decided to explore Bletchley Park with calm, as we were coming the next day again.
After entering the site, the first things we usually do is I go to the souvenir shop and my husband goes for a coffee. The reason I usually buy my souvenirs first is because when we enter the site the store is empty, and we have enough time to browse every single item in the shop. Whilst at end, everyone wants to buy, the store is packed and you need to rush as the site is closing.
After buying enough souvenirs for our entire collective family, we started with the exhibitions at the visitor’s centre about how Bletchley Park was founded. This was narrated using videos of that timeframe. After this, I went to collect my audio guide which will aid with my tour and it free to everyone.
The site is divided into huts and block. The huts were the first constructions to be built inside the site and were meant to be temporary, however, the requirements of the codebreakers team grew so much that they had to build more permanent constructions, which were the Blocks. Currently, you could visit most of the huts remaining except Hut 1 and 10, however, beside the Block B and C the rest are undergoing refurbishment.
The first place we visited was Block B. The first floor has several original German enigma machines (with three and four rotors), a reconstructive Bombe machine, a checking machine, and everything related to Alan Turin’s life while at Bletchley Park. Alan Turin and his team designed the Bombe machine, as the codebreaker machine to decipher the enigma machine. The enigma machine was a code machine that replace every letter with a different one by simply changing the combination of the three rotors.
Alan Turin and his team, had an enigma machine to reverse engineer the codebreaking. However, it was still a lot of combination as for the three rotors were more than 1,000 and for the four rotors were more than 10,000. Therefore, Turin’s team designed the bombe to sort out through all these possible combinations. The Bombe, derived from the polish name bomba, had 3 sections of 12 rows and 3 lines for the outcome.
The objective was to obtain three letters (one per rotor), which were checked in the checking machine, then if the combination was incorrect the entire process started again. However, if the code was correct this was sent to the codebreakers to decipher the message, then to the translators, then to the analytics, and finally sent via intelligence reports to look as if the information was obtained via spies’ work in order to keep secret that the enigma’s machine code was broken. This was done every day, as the code changed every day and every branch of the military had different codes and every army spoke in different languages.
However, the first step of this process was to intercept the message and then sent this for codebreaking. The message was sent wireless from overseas countries and the Y stations received them, then wrote them down on paper, and finally sent them to Bletchley Park via motorcycle or teleprinter. The bombe machine became so important for communication that by December 1944 more than 152 (3-rotor) machines were used to decipher message. The estimation is that thanks to the work done at Bletchley Park, World War II was shorten by two years.
In any case, my fascination with the bombe machine is the amazing mechanical engineering necessary to design, build and maintain such a fascinating machine.
After exploring the life and work of Alan Turin during his time at Bletchley Park in the first floor, the second floor had the Lorenz machine. The Lorenz machine was another code machine used only by German High Command. This machine was much more complicated, as it had 12 rotors and the codebreakers did not have the machine during the war.
The story about discovering of this machine is that an operator sent 4,000 characters to another operator and due to poor weather conditions the other operator response was sent uncoded that the message did not arrive and please resend. However, the first operator neglected to change the settings (as per protocol) and resent the same message, with the same settings but this time used abbreviations (because who has the time to send it all again) and the message was shorter. The two messages were given to mathematician Bill Tutte, who was also a cryptanalyst, and his team, and they were able to completely worked out the logical structure of the machine without every seeing the machine. This reverse engineering process is considered “one of the greatest intellectual feats of WWII”.
Although they knew how the machine worked they were not able to develop an electromagnetic machine, like the bombe, as this was required a more logical approach rather than brute force. After this, a team of code breakers lead by Ralph Tester (known as the Testery) began the job of designing a machine capable of breaking Tunny (name of this machine’s code) message and for this they developed firstly the Robinsons and finally the Colossus. The Colossus is considered the first electronic digital computer, as it proved to be efficient and quick against the 12-rotor Lorenz machine.
The Block B hosted both code machines used during WWII and a brief story as to how the teams at Bletchley Park broke their code, built the machines to accelerate the process of breaking the code, and finally how this information helped shorten the war. We spent so much time reading the information on every single piece of information that by the time we finished with the building we needed some place to sit and rest.
With this in mind, we made our way to the Mansion. The Mansion is an amazing building with a combination of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque styles. Currently the Mansion has a restaurant that serves afternoon tea (booking required), two big rooms for exhibitions, the second floor is not open for visitor, a room dressed as WWII library, and the office of Alistair Denniston first head of GC&CS. The decorations of the house are breath taken with amazing wooden staircase and banister, gold decorated high ceilings, however, our highlight of the Mansion was the amazing wall to ceiling library and the example of a working office of a code breaking office.
After entering the Mansion and admiring its construction, we were still needed to sit and since we did not have any reservation we went to Hut 4 for some refreshments. The hut has been refurbished to accommodate a nice little restaurant with decorations of WWII posters remining you to no talk about your work with the people in your table as everything was top-secret.
By the time we finished with our refreshments it was almost 16.30 and the site was due to close at 17.00. Therefore, we decided to cover the far west of the remaining huts, which were Hut 12 and the Chauffeurs’ Hut.
Hut 12 had an exhibition about the history of the rescued and restoration of Bletchley Park and some of the items found during this process. It was very interested to find out that due to the secrecy that every person upheld during the war time until the activities were declassified, 70 years later, Bletchley Park was almost destroyed and many changes underwent during this period that some of the buildings were demolish and neglect. And that took for Milton Keynes Council to declare the site a conservation area for the Bletchley Park Trust to be formed in order to maintain the site as a museum.
After finished with Hut 12, the site was closing and it was starting to rain very heavy. However, we were still missing Chauffeurs’ Hut so we took our umbrellas and went to see what was inside. We found out the hut was full of chairs, conference style, and nothing further to see.
After this, we made our way to the visitor’s entrance (Block C). I returned the audio guide and we made our way towards the car passing a crowded souvenir shop. Once inside the car we made our way towards the hotel.
Once in the hotel, we made our way towards our room and since we were exhausted after an amazing day at Bletchley Park, we decided to order room service and sleep early, as the next day we were returning to Bletchley Park to hear the explanation of about the bombe machine that we missed and to conclude our visit to the site.
On 1st April, we left our room at around 10.00 and headed to the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast. We sat next to the window to have a better view of the empty MK Dons football stadium. We enjoyed an amazing breakfast buffet.
At around 11.20 after breakfast, we made our way to Bletchley Park and parked next to the National Museum of Computing (NMC). We left the car and walked towards the door, once inside we realised that just one part of the museum was opened and the entire museum will open at 12.00, therefore, we decided to return to the car and wait until then.
At 12.00, we made our way to the main entrance of the museum and after taking a nice selfie we paid our entrance fee, as this is not cover by the Bletchley Park ticket and it was a one off.
Our first stop was the Tunny Gallery, where the first machine to break the Tunny code the Robinson family was. The gallery was a replica of the real working ensemble as to how the system worked from receiving the message until using the machine to break the code. The tunny gallery has an operational reconstruction of the Robinson family and the Colossus machine, as the originals were removed and destroyed at the end of the war.
We usually when visiting a museum, we take enough time to read every single notation made, as this will enhance our museum knowledge, but for our surprise as we were finishing with the Colossus machine a gentleman was starting its explanation about the Robinson machine and we decided to stay. The guide turn on the machines to depict the noises generating in the room where the messages were received to the Robinson family machine and the noise was extremely loud, however, the amazing part was seeing working the Colossus machine and imagining that this entire room was the first computer and has less processing power than a digital wristwatch.
After this amazing explanation, we continued our trip unguided. The next room depicted the 1st generation computer gallery. This exhibition depicted the first digital calculator (same size of the colossus). The next exhibition was the large systems gallery depicting the first programmable computers which used perforated cards. It was curious that as soon as I saw this, I remember the description of the first computer my father used in his worked and they were exactly the same.
The rest of the museum is dedicated to the evolution of various digital systems. There is an exhibition dedicated to video games, mobile phones, calculators, and personal computers. I found the exhibitions age telling, as I found that I have used mobile since the 2nd generation (the fabulous Ericsson with keypath cover), and I used to play videogames on the 1st generation Nintendo. In any case, the exhibition is a time capsule for anyone into computer engineering. The last exhibition was a demonstration of Morse code transmission and reception.
After visiting the NMC, we made our way to Bletchley Park to finish with the rest of the exhibitions. After being inspired about the guided tour of the Tunny machines, we went straight to the Bombe machine to hear the explanation, as we were unable to listen to it the previous day. We were finally more aware of how the machine worked and was reconstructed after the war, and how GC&CS sometimes as demonstration sends encoded message to Bletchley Park and them using the bombe are able to decode successfully the message with a success rate of 100%.
After this we went to Hut 3, we entered a long and dark corridor with small rooms in both sides. Inside the rooms were old tables, typewriters, office equipment, personal effects and some holograms talking and giving instructions, everything looking like it was during World War II. Then we went to Hut 6 was the same as Hut 3, however, this was a bit more spacious and brighter. The inside of the rooms was dark and suffocating, these will never pass health and safety protocols of this era. The most shocking things were the posters in the rooms, reiterating the vow of secrecy they had undertaken “careless taking may give away vital secrets”.
After leaving the Hut, it was very apparent that interrelationship between huts as these were very closely located. Each hut was responsible for one step of a bigger chain and the faster result reached the next hut, the faster the code will be return to the field.
Then we visit Hut 8, this hut hosted Alan Turin and his team while breaking the German enigma machine. Inside is an exhibition dedicated to pigeon messages during WWII, Alan Turin’s war office, more office equipment and the rest of the hut is an interactive exhibition explaining codebreaking. The most shocking thing for me to see was the working conditions of the office with little or no ventilation and light.
After leaving Hut 8, we walked towards Hut 11 and Hut 11A and I realised that outside the hut there was a wall surrounding the building. The wall was around 2m height and surrounded the building entirely with exception of the door. After some research, I found out that this was to avoid flooding. In front to these huts standing broken was Hut 1, which is currently undergoing refurbishment.
We continued our way to Hut 11 and Hut 11A. These huts used to host the bombe machines. As the war progressed, the need for multiple machine was necessary and these huts were built for this purpose. These machines required 24 hours monitoring and this was done by WRENS (women’s royal navy service) operators. Currently Hut 11 is a sensory exhibition depicting the life of WRENS as this machines were noisy and held in very dark environment.
Hut 11A has a fully interactive Bombe exhibition. This shows you how the Bombe machine works from beginning to end in a very short and straight forward video with a virtual machine. You are able to manipulate samples of the equipment used by it and a very detail history of how the bombe was designed and built.
The difference between Hut 11A and Block B bombe machine is that: in Block B you can see the reconstructive machine and all the engineering needed to work it (an engineer place) and Hut 11A has a virtual bombe machine that depicts how it works without going into details as to what make it works.
After finishing with the huts, we decided to explore the rest of the site as we were only missing the back of the mansion. We made our way through the tennis court and into small brick-wall cottages. These cottages were where everything started, as at the beginning of the war there were a very small operation and staff was able to work from this location.
Currently the cottages are close to visitors. The cottages were next to the stableyard and clock arch, which gave way towards the garage. The garage had a small collection of war vehicles including a 1940 Packard Six, a courier motorcycle (1943 Norton WD16H), and an ambulance (1938 Austin 18) to mention some.
The garage was the last building in the site and after this we had covered Bletchley Park to our satisfaction and it was time for a tea break, and therefore we went to Hut 4. However, since we were at the back of the mansion I wanted to find a way to reach the hut from that side. And after some doubtful moments, we arrived to Hut 4 ready for a well-deserved rest.
After this, we decided that we indeed had exhausted the site and we were ready to return to the hotel and reflect on everything we learnt today. While my husband went to pick up the car, I was able to finish my photographs of the entrance and the security office. Once inside the car, we made our way to the hotel.
Before going into the hotel, we went an explore the mall surrounding the hotel and we found out that it was a big site full of nice restaurants, entertainment locations and coffee places. We picked up some amazing cold coffees and now we were ready to arrive to the hotel.
Once inside the hotel room, I decided that we still had enough time before dinner reservation at 19.30, so I continued writing my blog entry of last month about my valentine day with my husband.
At around 19.15, we made our way to the restaurant. This time we pick the restaurant with the view of the stadium (the one where we had breakfast) and had a delicious main of lamb and fish, and finished with a share apple crumble and a latte. While we were dinning, we talked to the waiter and found out that the MK Dons were due to play the next day and I was wondering, as always, how could I see the game from this VIP place. It turned out that during the game, the restaurant area is close to guests and the rooms with balcony view of the stadium become VIP box. It turns out also that the 4th floor of the hotel has a panoramic view of the stadium; however, this is highly monitor and you are not allowed to stop and watch the game. Therefore, unless you have paid for tickets you cannot see the game for free.
Since this was our last night at the hotel/stadium and we did not have tickets for the game, we decided to explore the rest of the hotel this meant 4th floor. We walked all the way from the restaurant to the other end and then go back to our room as it was on the 3rd floor. Once arrived to the room, we made arrangements for the checking out the next day.
On 2nd April, we woke up late as check-out was 12.00 and we were not in a rush to have scheduled breakfast. We took our time getting ready and around 12.00, we made our way to reception to pay the final bill. On our way to the reception, I was able to see the transformation of the rooms next to the stadium changed into VIP box with the name of the company replacing the room number. The waiter last night told us that the beds fold into place and then replace with the needed furniture.
Once downstairs at the reception, while my husband was paying the bill I was able to see how the players, referees and club staff were arriving to the hotel as the kick off was 15.30 and a lot of preparations were needed. After paying the bill, my husband went and pick up the car and we loaded the trunk. After this, our Milton Keynes adventure was over and we started our way back home.
After leaving the hotel, the first thing we needed to do was to find someplace to get breakfast. Luckily, after many times of going to Bletchley Park we knew the location of Burger King and we made our way to the restaurant.
After having a fulfilling lunch, we made our way to our house. The route was M1, M25, M11, A12 and then home. However, it was Easter Monday and everyone was returning to London and the motorway was packed and on top of this was raining.
While making our slow way home, we stopped at service in South Mimms, as until now I was fully asleep and this was my opportunity to wake up in order to return home safe. We arrived home around 16.00 and we started making preparation for the following days as our break was over.
Bletchley Park was an amazing experience better than what I thought it would be. I was expecting a more Anne Frank museum experience, like this is where this happen and that happen. However, this was a more engineering/creative visit as I got to see the real machine working and the parts that form it, in essence the real science behind the codebreaking machines.
In this era of technology, it is very important to understand that the creative required to design this machine was forged by the need of solving a problem thought to be unsolvable and of the people that decided that they could do this. I believe that Bletchley Park is more than a regular museum where you only see things, the interactivity of the exhibitions allows you get immerse into the minds of the designers, and depending of you age and your knowledge in technology is depth of your understanding.
Therefore, if you love science and technology, and you think that there is nothing else for you to design and that everything has been done. Come and see Bletchley Park as this is a place full of possibilities and think that before an engineer built the machine, a physics design the system and a mathematician broke the code, there was a problem needed to be solved. So, start with a problem you want solved, then find the way to solve it, and by the time that you solve it, you had become a scientist…so give it a go.
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