Bletchley Park

These are some pictures I took during a visit in 2005. For more detail, see the Bletchley Park site at http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ and also the virtual tour at http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/bletchleypark/index.htm

This is the Mansion at Bletchley Park. It was also know as Station X. The records on the place go back to the Domesday Book of 1086. The present mansion, an odd mix of architectural styles, was built after its purchase by Sir Herbert Samual Leon in 1883.

It passed from the family's hands into a builder, who was planning to tear it down for a housing estate, when Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, director of British Naval Intelligence 1919-1921 and founder of SIS, commonly known as MI6, purchased it with his own money.

The mansion was soon surrounded by hastily-built structures, referred to as huts and simply numbered.

Here you see the end of the mansion and part of Hut 4. Hut 4 was occupied by Naval Intelligence, it was where they analyzed decrypts of German Naval messages.

At right is Hut 12.

Alan Turing lived in "the Cottage", beside the carriage house and the Mansion.

The turret with the windows at top led to his room. Dilly Knox, John Jeffreys, and others lived in other rooms of the Cottage.

Left to right, at right:

Hut 3 (red), intelligence: translation and analysis of decrypts of German Army and Air Force messages.

Hut 6, Cryptanalysis of German Army and Air Force ciphergrams.

Hut 1, the first hut, built in 1939.

At left:

Hut 6, Cryptanalysis of German Army and Air Force ciphergrams.

At right:

Hut 3 (red), intelligence: translation and analysis of decrypts of German Army and Air Force messages.

Hut 6, Cryptanalysis of German Army and Air Force ciphergrams.

Hut 3, intelligence: translation and analysis of decrypts of German Army and Air Force messages

Hut 3 (red, at left), intelligence: translation and analysis of decrypts of German Army and Air Force messages.

Hut 6, Cryptanalysis of German Army and Air Force ciphergrams.

This training facility was used by GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, basically the UK equivalent to the US's National Security Agency, into, I think, the early to mid 1980s. This is up the rise beyond H block.

It looks like a medium-sized battered elementary school.

Here we are walking from H Block down between D Block (visible to left) and E Block (off to right).

The battered H Block building.

B Block at left, leading into E Block.

B Block now contains several exhibits, including this reconstructed German wireless station.

The British Y service intercept operators used these HF receivers to collect the intercepts attacked by the cryptanalysts.

Here is some Nazi German cipher equipment.

At left: Lorenz SZ42 Schlusselzusatz cipher machine.

At right: Lorenz T32 teleprinter.

The British cryptanalysts build a functional replica of the German Enigma machine, following the work done by the Poles before them. This shows the opened rear of a bombe.

The device was called a Bombe, and two explanations are given for its name:

First, and probably most likely, this was the designed by the Polish mathematicians turns cryptanalysts as they discussed the problem over an ice cream dish known as a bomba.

A less convincing claim is that the name had to do with the ticking sound made by the machine as it worked through the possible keys, stopping and ringing a bell when it found a solution.

Here is a closer view of the rear of an opened Bombe reconstruction.

And a side view of the rear panel of an opened Bombe....

The front panel of a Bombe held an array of drums simulating Enigma rotors. Each colume of three drums simulates one 3-rotor Enigma machine, or for the point of the Bombe, one possible initial setting of a 3-rotor Enigma machine.

Hut 8, where Naval Intelligence analyzed the decrypts of German naval messages.

Hut 8, view into window

Hut 6 (at left), cryptanalysis of German Army and Air Force cryptograms.

Hut 1, the first hut built.

That's it, for far more detail see the Bletchley Park site at http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ and also the virtual tour at http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/bletchleypark/index.htm

Scotland and Orkney

An ascent of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain, overlooking Glen Nevis just outside Fort William.	The Road to the Isles, over 22 miles (37 km) overland across the high Scottish moors of Lochaber from Corrour Station to Fort William.	A trek through Glen Nevis and the Water of Nevis.
The Brealach Walk out of Pitlochry though the southern Highlands and past some megaliths.	Skara Brae, a Neolithic village on Orkney.	Neolithic Orkney: Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness, and the Knowe of Onston.
West Coast Walk along the sea cliffs of Orkney's Mainland Coast.	Scapa Flow and the Churchill Barriers.	The Sousterrain, an underground Pictish dwelling in Orkney.
The Isle of Iona, and Oban and Mull.	The Grit Boxes of Scotland.	Navigating with the UK National Grid system and Ordnance Survey maps.

England

Walking along Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland.	Stonehenge, Woodhenge, and Durrington Walls.	Avebury, with its stone circles, Silbury Hill, the West Kennet Long Barrow, the Avenue and numerous tumuli, a much better collection of megaliths and structures than Stonehenge!
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford.	Dover's tunnels in the White Cliffs from World War II through the Cold War.	The Swingate Chain Home radar station near Dover.
The World War II glider base near Harwell, south of Oxford.	Bletchley Park, the secret installation where the British broke the German codes during World War II.	The Cabinet War Rooms, Churchill's emergency World War II government center underground in central London.
You could go to Lee Ho Fook's and get a big dish of beef chow mein.		What's the plumbing like?

Travel in the U.K. — places to stay, how to get around

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