I am staying about 100m from Padington Station. This is the railway station that Padington the Bear was named after. So of course the doctor below is called ‘Milne House Medical Centre’, named after A.A. Milne who wrote the story.

These swans were swimming in Hyde Park. I was not able to check into the Hotel when I arrived there at 8am, so I decided to go to Bletchley. But I did not want to spend an extra 30 pounds on a ticket, so I needed to do something else first so I walked through Hyde Park to Green Park station. These swans were in the lake in Hyde Park.

The ticket to Bletchley was only about 16 pounds return. Not bad really. It took about 40 minutes to get up there. I saw the new Wembly Stadium in the distance. This is the one the our friends at Multiplex are having troubles finishing.

When I arrived at Bletchley park I found some rather strange things. One was a number of satellite uplink vehicles like the one below. There were also what appeared to be a number of german officers from WWII. For those that do not know, Bletchley Park was home to about 7000 people during the war, and it was a facility that the Germans did not know existed. The movie Enigma is a fictional account of the place. It was a code breaking establishment, and they probably shortened the war by about two years and saved a heap of lives. A news story from the BBC on Bletchley from today is here

The main house below was used as the office. There are about seven different generations of building work done there. In the distance on the left is ‘Hut 1’ where naval codes were broken during WWII. The other address of this place was POBox 111, London.

This is a closer view of Hut 1

Below is Hut 6 and I think Hut 2. The huts are in better condition than they look. The main problem is that paint does not stick to the wood so it always looks like it is peeling off.

You can see the blast wall below. The germans did try to bomb the place once during the war, but it is assumed that they did that by mistake.

This is the BOMBE that was used in the movie ENIGMA.

A Plane in the grounds.

And here is the submarine from the movie too.

This machine is called Collusus. It is a working replica of the machine that was used during WWII to help crack some of the code. Just like the BOMBE above.

The lake in thr grounds. You can just imagine what this place was like in WWII. The guide tells stories of how even today people who worked there take a lot of convinving to talk about their work. They were sworn to secrecy. Not until the 1970’s did anyone know this place existed, and even now not all the details have been released.

In the distance is the BOMBE replica. This is the machine that won WWII. It will not be on display until next year, but we were given a very rare chance to see this view as it was commissioned on live TV earlier in the day. Amazing really. This machine was rebuilt mostly from plans obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Bletchley was really amazing. I will have to go again. And when I get back I am putting in an order for stuff.

When I got back and I had checked in and had a snooze I went to Queensway to do some shopping. I found this church in the area and thought it looked cool.

I found another great story on News.COM.AU about how Steve Irwin was about to visit Thailand with a project on elephants, and how the news of his death was front page news over there. Unfortunately I did not get to see a paper when I was there…