Visiting Bletchley Park, Home of the Codebreakers
If you have been to see the movie “The Imitation Game” recently then you’d know exactly what Bletchley Park is all about, its where parts of the movie were filmed btw. If not, then let me tell you about my visit to one of the world’s best kept secrets: Bletchley Park, home of the code breakers. A place that was well hidden all these years even the local residents thought it was an psychiatric asylum. The park was neglected in later years and was about to be demolished and turned into a shopping mall but thankfully it was saved and restored and opened for visitors to explore.
Bletchley Station is about 25 minutes away from London by Train from Euston Station and five minutes away from the more famous and quite popular Milton Keynes station. If you’ve been to MK before, then you must have stopped at Bletchley and took it as a sign that you’ve almost reached your destination. I’ve passed by the station numerous times and the only reason to visit Bletchley for me was to go to Ikea or to ASDA/Walmart superstore. I never knew that just across the street from Bletchley’s train station was this historical site and I adore history!
After watching the imitation game in the UK I didn’t waste a second and hopped on the next train heading out to Bletchley. You cannot get lost, all you literally have to do is cross the street and voila you’ve reached your nondescript destination. If I had passed by this street before I would have thought those buildings belonged to a school or a government office and in a sense they actually did. Very basic and low key, box-styled with many huts scattered around.
The entrance and tickets stand is located at Block C, the very same building where a 100 Hollerith data processing machines were operated by women of Bletchley Park. Operators used to punch the information gathered from the intercepted message into cards then index and file them after sorting through them for patterns and clues to provide the code breakers with.
In block C also you could see the Enigma machine, used by the German troops to decode their outgoing messages, and an interactive radio machine just like the one used by the Bletchley Park operators to intercept those messages.
A display of old booklets and pamphlets, and war posters can be found in Block C as well.
You could also see some of the filed away messages and codes that were intercepted during the war. Impressive work, considering the messages were intercepted in German and Japanese and not in English.
Block C on its own could take an hour or two to go through if you want to read and look at everything. Once you are done, you head out the door to the rest of the park.
Visiting all of Bletchley Park requires a lot of walking in the outdoors space so you wouldn’t want to go when the weather is miserable or when its raining or snowing.
On the day of our visit the wind was vicious and blowing away making us stumble on our way as we walked hence I only visited two more places. First, it was Block B where I really wanted to see the fully-operational Alan Turin Bombe machine.
It isn’t the actual one which was destroyed after the war but this one was rebuilt again in 2009 from the original blueprints of the Bombe machine. It is said that 200 Bombe machines were built during the war to decipher the german Enigma code and be able to make sense of the intercepted messages.
Perhaps I should have become a mechanical engineer instead of a computer one! Their work is much more fun! I feel like I want to build stuff too! This is the Bombe machine from the back!
If you are an engineer or an engineering student you might want to visit this exhibition and take a look at the details of the bombe machine, it is very inspiring indeed and the exhibition is very detailed. Also in block B is the Alan Turin museum dedicated to highlighting his numerous achievements to the computer world. He is considered the founder of modern computer science, the builder of the ACE computer, and also the founder of the Artificial Intelligence field.
The few items left of Turin’s personal possessions are also on display, including a teddy bear he used to practice his lectures on before his students.
Block B could take another hour or two of your visit. I need to visit there again for sure. Afterwards we contemplated walking to the mansion and we are glad we did.
How gorgeous is the mansion? It is where the Imitation Game movie exhibition is held btw. Sadly by the time I made it through the doors I was too cold and tired so I decided to come back on another day.
Out again into the cold, passing by several different huts and even one with old bicycles used by actual employees of Bletchley Park! I really wanted to visit Hut 3 and 6 where the code breakers worked and the park booklet promises you could feel how it felt to work there but the wind was getting stronger and we could barely walk back to Block B.
This is my first and definitely not the last to this astonishing historical park with over 12,000 employees who, with all the extraordinary work they’ve already done also managed to keep the park a secret for all those decades! If you love history, or are moved by achievements, you’d want to visit as well.
Because it was a bitter-cold day I couldn’t wander between the huts any longer and opted to go home, my ticket is valid for one year from the date of purchase after all! Before you leave I stopped at the gift shop which is located in Hut C and loved everything about it! Plenty of old retro items from the Bletchley Park war era including replica booklets of ration books and how to make the most out of whatever was handed out during the war.
Because its Bletchley Park you could see a lot of books with mathematical puzzles on display. The one that I got for myself was a booklet of Brain Training puzzles that are said to be similar to what the codebreakers used when they were operating in Bletchley Park and if you were smart enough to solve them, you’d be the same level of smart needed to become a codebreaker yourself.
And because its important to me to know if I’m clever enough to would have been a codebreaker in the war if I wanted to, I had to have the booklet and I’ve been trying to solve a puzzle a day for the past few days. I was trying to solve puzzles on the plane ride back home and I have to admit that I’ve started out a bit rusty in the beginning but now I seem to have improved. I’ve always loved maths, and I am enjoying solving these puzzles one by one.
If you are in London or visiting London soon you must hop on a train from Euston station and make a stop at Bletchley. After visiting Bletchley Park perhaps you would like to take the train -or a taxi, or a bus- to Milton Keynes and have lunch at the Xscape, or the Hub, or the MK:centre and make a day out of it. Milton Keynes is only five minutes away by train and there is plenty to do there.
The Mansion, Bletchley Park, Sherwood Drive, Bletchley, Milton Keynes MK3 6EB, United Kingdom, Tel:
+44 1908 640404. For more information, directions, opening times, and prices you can check their website (link). To get there from London take a London Midland train from London Euston train station and the trip takes about 25-30 minutes depending on how many stops the train makes.
