Malton, North Yorkshire: Eden Camp

The final stop on our brief tour of the North before I mercifully got to go home and sleep in my own bed was Eden Camp, located just outside Malton. Eden Camp was the reason we had to stay in that horrible hotel in Malton (well, we could have stayed somewhere nicer if everywhere else hadn’t been booked up), but I won’t hold that against it. Though booking in advance was no longer strictly required at the time of our visit, I did so anyway to ensure we could get in without any difficulty. Tickets are £12, and you just book a pass for the day you want to visit, no need to pick a specific time slot.

  

Eden Camp is a WWII POW camp built in 1942 for Italian prisoners who had been captured in North Africa, but it held German POWs as well from 1944 until 1948 when the last prisoners were finally released. The huts where the prisoners lived had become completely derelict by the 1980s, when they were purchased by a man named Stan Johnson (not Boris Johnson’s father. A quick glance at his photo was more than enough to confirm that) who eventually converted them into the museum that exists today. Although most of the employees were in costume, it’s not really a living history museum; rather, each of the huts has been converted into its own little museum, covering topics ranging from World Wars I and II (of course) and the role of the British Army in various 20^th century wars, to 1940s fashion and entertainment.

  

We were greeted by a very friendly lady in a guard hut just outside the entrance who handed us a map of the site, and a guy dressed as a British WWII soldier showed us where to park. There are about thirty huts on the site, in addition to a children’s playground and café, and the map instructed us to start at Hut No 1, so we did. We assumed we were meant to see the huts in numerical order, but after getting stuck in a queue behind slow moving people for ages in Hut 1, we were itching to go off piste, but hesitated for fear of getting yelled at by one of the soldier staff members. However, as more people arrived (for once, we came very early in the day, just after opening) and the queuing situation got even worse, one of the “soldiers” approached us and let us know we could see them in any order, and you didn’t have to tell us twice! We’d probably still be stuck there waiting otherwise! However, if you do see the huts out of sequence, it might be useful to cross them off on the map as you visit each one. We didn’t do this and totally lost track of what we’d seen and what we hadn’t, and I think we may have ended up skipping a hut or two.

 

The first thing I noticed about the huts (other than how cold they were on the day we visited – the huts are neither heated nor air conditioned, so do dress accordingly depending on the weather) were the fabulous mannequins. Nearly every hut had numerous groupings of mannequins arranged into tableaux, and I could not have loved them more. Some of the huts were also quite atmospheric, like one that was meant to be the inside of a submarine, complete with sound effects, fog, and a moving floor. Another told the story of the Great Escape, and had tunnelling mannequins that rather hilariously rode back and forth along the floor on little train tracks. The huts even included another one of my loves – authentic smells! Some of them were so bad I was grateful for my mask (masks did not seem to be required, and only about half the visitors were wearing them, but some of the huts were quite crowded and I felt much more comfortable with it on), but they nonetheless enhanced the experience.

 

Much as I loved the special effects of the themed huts, my favourite hut was probably the one that told the stories of the POWs that lived at the camp, including toys and other things the men had made whilst staying there. Apparently, one of the German prisoners was a blacksmith, and he was asked to make a pair of “fire dogs” by one of the guards. Not understanding what they were, he literally made a pair of iron dachshunds (the signage made sure to point out that they were dachshunds) and these were utterly charming (other than the fact that they were made by a Nazi, of course). Another prisoner had drawn a series of cartoons about life at the camp, which were also quite funny. The German POWs in particular were generally accepted by the local community, probably helped by them being white Europeans from a similar culture. Local families would invite some of the men over for dinner, and some of them ended up marrying local women and staying in the area. However, although conditions at the camp weren’t anywhere near as bad as those at some of the camps in other countries, the barracks the men stayed in looked fairly grim and had to be absolutely freezing in winter (given how cold it was in summer there) so I’m sure it wasn’t all a bed of roses (but do Nazi prisoners deserve a bed of roses? Nope).

 

I also really enjoyed the 1940s fashion street scene and some of the displays in the entertainment hut. Anything that was a break from the military was a relief, as there were a LOT of army-related huts, and they got a little samey after a while, particularly the ones about wars later in the 20^th century. In terms of the non-museum huts, I was a bit disappointed to see that the café just seemed to have not particularly appealing looking standard British café fayre. Not that I particularly wanted to eat marg and potato scones with carrot jam or anything, but it would have been nice if they had something a bit more authentic to match the rest of the experience. However, the toilets, despite also being located in a hut, were surprisingly nice!

 

On the whole, I actually really enjoyed my experience at Eden Camp. I will say that there was far too much text to even attempt to try to read it all, and like many WWII museums, it erred a bit on the side of excusing the behaviour of the Nazis who stayed at the camp (a “just following orders” mentality). Also, despite having a section on the Holocaust, they still had a Hitler mannequin that veered a bit too far into comedy territory, and I’m not keen on glorification of the military in general, which was a major theme throughout. However, even with the caveats, Eden Camp was still probably the highlight of the trip apart from the ice cream in Ripley, though that perhaps says more about the rest of the holiday than the quality of Eden Camp. 3.5/5.

Canton, OH: The MAPS Museum

I’ve mentioned before how my brother is not necessarily the biggest fan of museums (which isn’t to say that he won’t visit them, just that he doesn’t get excited about them like I do), but he does like military museums (if you couldn’t tell from my Belgium posts), and there is one right in Canton, Ohio that I hadn’t yet been to (though he had, on multiple occasions). So, we decided to visit it together, and go see They Shall Not Grow Old right afterwards (since I liked it so much when I watched it on the BBC I was more than happy to watch it again on a big screen) for a full-day of war-related fun (if war is ever “fun”).

  

The MAPS Museum is primarily an aviation museum (MAPS is an acronym for Military Aviation Preservation Society), but they do have some galleries on Ohio troops from all branches of the military.  Admission to MAPS is $10, and includes the option of a free guided tour, though as we had to leave at a specific time to catch the film, we opted to guide ourselves. (Also, they have one of the cutest mailboxes ever, as you can see above.)

  

We were still greeted by one of the volunteers right after entering the museum, and he told us more about some of the objects we showed the most interest in. It was nice to see such friendly and passionate volunteers (without being scary, like the woman on the USS Cod). My attention was grabbed right away by the Sopwith Triplane 1916, since the Sopwith factory was in Kingston upon Thames, which is where I work (Kingston that is, not the Sopwith factory, which has been defunct since the 1990s). According to the volunteer, it was built (or restored? I don’t remember which) by a man in Ohio with advice from former Sopwith people in Kingston. We don’t even have a Sopwith in our museum, just some models and an old time clock from the factory (I mean, that’s partially because we don’t have room for a plane, but it would still be cool), so it was good to see one here.

  

I’m no aviation buff, but the hangar was full of an interesting array of aircraft, including a couple planes you could climb into, and the gondola from a Goodyear Blimp (Goodyear have a massive blimp hangar not far from the MAPS Museum. They usually have a Christmas event where you can drive through it. It’s neat!). There are even more aircraft housed outside, which you can view in the summer, but the gates were locked when we visited. Apparently many of the planes are on loan from the Air Force, so the MAPS Museum can restore them and send them back, which is really pretty cool. Also cool (temperature-wise) was the hangar, a little too cool, frankly, as they tend to be, so my brother suggested heading into the gallery at the back to warm up a little.

  

This turned out to be about aviators in a number of wars, but primarily WWII. There were a lot of great newspaper clippings and artefacts in here – in fact, almost too many, as there was too much text to read it all on one visit. But I would rather have too much information than not enough, and there was interesting stuff, like the story of the unfortunately named Lt. Reamer “Buzz” Sewell (I can see why he went by his nickname, but it was evidently a family name, as his father was a Reamer too), who was captured by the Germans and served out the remainder of the war in a POW camp; and that of the “Romanian Princess” who helped to save 1200 airmen during the war (there was a sweet little article about how they threw her a party after she moved to the US in 1955, and she was thrilled to see all her “boys” again).

  

Oh yeah, and there were some fantastic mannequins. Just really superlatively doofy, as you can probably see. And Dilbert the parachute dummy.

  

There was also a gallery upstairs, and this was a more general history of wars that Ohio troops had some involvement in, going all the way back to skirmishes between Native Americans and some of the earliest settlers (obviously not a shining moment in Ohio’s history), up until roughly the present day (I can’t remember where exactly it finished but there was definitely stuff about the Vietnam War, and possibly the Gulf War as well). There were also displays about the Civil War, which were of more interest to me (the Civil War is great for social history, because it had such a huge effect in shaping the country America became (for better or worse) and totally changed American death practices, in addition to being fascinating from a medical history point of view), including a small display about Harvey the dog, who I encountered 5 years ago at the Massillon Museum (not the real dog, obviously (though I suppose he could have been taxidermied), but a display about him).

  

I liked the section on WWI also, though I could have done with more stories about individual soldiers from Ohio, like the one about Eugene J. Bullard, the first black fighter pilot (he fought in the French Foreign Legion because he was living in Europe when the war started, having found that it offered many more opportunities than still segregated America), and less general history, though I suppose most Americans aren’t particularly well versed in WWI (since we were only in it for about a year) so perhaps it’s for the best that it’s there. I did enjoy the display about failed WWI inventions, like the poor fellow who had to wear the giant headset shown below (captioned simply and amusingly “didn’t work”).

  

I also have to mention the story of a teacher named Eva Sparrowgrove, because it made me tear up a little. She wrote to all 310 of her former students that enlisted during the war, and made a window banner to commemorate their service, including gold stars for the 9 who died in combat.  There was a fire at her house in 1950, but another one of her former students who became a fire fighter was able to save the banner, albeit with a little water damage. Lest you worry, Eva also survived the fire and continued to teach until 1973. She died in 1985 at the age of 82.

  

The museum was more on the scale of the Wings Museum than that of some larger aviation museums I’ve visited, but had far better (and more coherent) content than Wings (though sadly, nowhere to put my ass where Damian Lewis’s ass had been). Because we did have to leave to see the film (and get frosty chocolate milkshakes after!), I didn’t read everything completely thoroughly (honestly, it was just too damn much to read), but I guess that will give me a reason to return (my brother informs me that their displays also change regularly). I think they could be a little more discerning about the amount of material they’re including (as in, there doesn’t need to be quite so much of it!) but I get the sense that they are largely volunteer-run, and the volunteers were all super friendly and helpful, so I’ll cut them some slack. 3.5/5.

  

Bastogne, Belgium: Bastogne War Museum

As regular readers will know, my brother visited me for a week a couple of weeks back, and while he’s generally pretty up for doing stuff, it’s not necessarily the same stuff I like doing (though the things I like doing are basically sitting inside, eating, and reading), so I wanted to try to find some activities we would both enjoy. He’s not too much of a museum kind of guy, but he does have some interest in the Second World War, so I thought a trip through Belgium would give us a chance to combine some of his interests (WWII and beer) with some of mine (eating chocolate and waffles). I prefer Flanders to Wallonia, but Flanders is of course very much WWI country, and for WWII, we would have to venture deep into the French-speaking part of Belgium, to the Ardennes.

  

Things didn’t get off to a great start when I really had to pee about an hour outside of Brussels, and there was nowhere to stop. We finally found a gas station large enough to have a toilet, but they had a sign on the door stating it was 50 cents to use the bathroom for non-customers, and none of us had any cash, having forgotten to get some in Brussels. This was obviously complete nonsense (charging to use a toilet at a gas station is almost literally taking the piss. Or maybe the opposite of taking the piss? I can’t decide), but I was willing to buy a bag of crisps with a card if it would give me access to the facilities. My brother asked them in English if we could use the toilet (he’s not accustomed to being in non-Anglophone countries), which got him a blank stare, so I just urgently shouted, “la toilette, s’il vous plait!” which got me the key, but the two women working there did mock me in French for quite some time, which I let slide because they did let me use the damn toilet in the end, but I obviously still bear a grudge (I took seven years of French, which is apparently enough to make my need for the toilet understood, but not quite enough to reply to insults in an appropriately biting manner).

  

Anyway, we eventually made it to Bastogne, and the Bastogne War Museum, which happily offers numerous free toilets once you’ve paid the admission fee (€14). Admission includes the use of their audio guide, which is one of those fancy modern ones that is triggered when you enter each audio zone. This is easier than punching in the numbers yourself, but annoying when you accidentally wander out of one of the zones and the audio guide gets cut off, with no way to bring it back. I liked that the sound came out of two little prongs that sat on the side of your head just above your ears, because those headphones that cover your entire ear make the outsides of my ears ache after a while (and don’t get me started on ear buds!). I read somewhere that the Bastogne War Museum was recently redone, and the new design was heavily influenced by the In Flanders Fields Museum, which everyone but me appears to really love (I didn’t hate it, I just think there’s better WWI museums out there).

  

This was apparent from the audio guide, which aimed to give us a more human perspective on the war by having people who lived through the war serve as our guides – though unlike the In Flanders Field Museum, which assigns you a historical counterpart based on your age and where you’re from, in Bastogne War Museum, everyone was given the points of view of four different people throughout – Robert, an American soldier, a 12 year old Belgian boy named Emile, his 20-something year old teacher Mathilde, who worked for the Resistance, and Hans, a German soldier (they emphasised that he was fighting because he had pride in his homeland, rather than being pro-genocide (which is still problematic because of the horrible things people do in the name of nationalism) but it seemed a bit odd to ignore that major aspect of Nazi Germany, though the Holocaust was covered elsewhere in the galleries). Actually Hans was probably the most interesting to listen to, just because it’s a perspective you don’t always hear – Emile was kind of irritating, but you ended up feeling bad for him in the end once you heard his story – and I think the four perspectives all together made for a more nuanced view of the war than what we got at the In Flanders Fields Museum (cool though it was to have been given someone to identify with based on your own stats), though obviously WWII was a very different war.

  

In addition to the audio guide, there were also three “multi-sensory” experiences dispersed throughout the museum (a bit hard to describe – basically you entered a themed theatre and sat down to watch some projections and audio commentary, with sound and light effects) – an Allied General HQ from 1944, the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge (my personal favourite, even though it was really really cold in there, but I think that may have been intentional to enhance the atmosphere), and a cellar under a cafe in Bastogne, where our four audio guide characters finally all met in real life. The rest of the museum was a fairly standard layout, with a few interactive things for children exclusively in French, though of course you had your audio guide popping on and off in the midst of reading signage.

  

I’m personally much more into WWI than WWII, so I didn’t know much about the Battle of the Bulge going in, other than the few episodes of Band of Brothers that I’ve watched (and I don’t even know if I watched the Battle of the Bulge one. My grandpa was stationed in Belgium for a while, but not until after the war ended, so he didn’t take part in any of these battles). But the museum offers a more comprehensive view of the war than just what happened in Bastogne, which was only one section of it (though it was the subject of two of the “multi-sensory experiences”), albeit a very sad part, as civilian casualties during the battle were very high (around 3000) due to all the bombing (from both sides), and the Germans also randomly executed a bunch of Belgian civilians just because they could (including, spoiler alert, Emile’s father).

  

By the end of the museum, I was fairly attached to all of the audio guide characters, even Emile, so it was interesting when we discovered they were all based on real people, and were told what happened to them after the war. They are now all dead, except Emile (at least at the time the audio guide was recorded), who took over his father’s bike shop in a nearby town, and apparently can still sometimes be seen walking down the road in Bastogne (as I’ve said, I wasn’t that keen on Emile, mainly because Emile had an accordion which he insisted on playing whilst hiding out in a cellar with a group of random villagers throughout the long days of bombing, and he played the same song over and over again (I think I would have left the cellar and taken my chances with the bombs!), but I loved the characterisation of Emile’s dad, who apparently said things like, “Holy Handlebars!” and “Holy Spokes!” because of being in the bicycle business. I think the latter phrase works better than the former). Overall, I think it was quite an interesting and fun experience, so I’ll give it 4/5.

  

This wasn’t all that was on site though, as there was also a huge, rather hideous sculpture of the famous scene of the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square during V-J Day located behind the museum. As the nurse tells it, they didn’t know each other and he just randomly grabbed her and kissed her (she said it wasn’t even a good kiss!). I get it was the end of the war and people were excited, but it’s still a bit unpleasant and has nothing to do with Belgium, so I guess it’s just here on account of being an iconic image? The Mardasson War Memorial is also right behind the museum, and wow, that is a pretty imposing structure! It was built in the late 1940s to commemorate those killed in the battle, and includes a weirdly modern arty crypt underneath, decorated with the mosaics of Fernand Leger. I actually quite liked the crypt, it just wasn’t really what I was expecting from a site connected to the military, which tend to be much more staid, and I dunno, eagle-y?

  

It had gotten really cold and kind of rainy whilst we were in the museum, but my brother still wanted to view a few nearby sites, so we spent some time driving along the roads outside Bastogne, and quickly jumping out when we got to a memorial. My favourite one was the one that abutted a pine forest – though it was clearly planted after the battle, it was eerily silent inside, and gave you some idea of what the soldiers might have experienced before the fighting commenced. There was also a memorial paid for by Tom Hanks, who keeps on living up to his decent guy reputation (That Thing You Do is seriously one of my favourite movies of all time, and I actually really enjoyed his book of short stories, so I am kind of a fan).

  

We also walked through the town of Bastogne, and despite the tourist brochure’s assurance that “shops are open even on Sundays!” apparently they weren’t open on Mondays, as we were starving, and virtually everything was shut (echoes of our experience in France). We did enjoy the animal sculptures that we found lining the high street, but with no prospect of food there, we didn’t linger (so staying in Bastogne may not be a great idea on a Monday). We ended up stopping by a small crappy Carrefour just outside of town for bread and cheese (not knocking Carrefour, because I love the hypermarche versions), and didn’t find much more open, even when we got to Liege, so whilst my brother and Marcus wandered the cold streets in search of a hot dinner, I was perfectly content to pop down to the Delhaize next to the hotel and read a book in the warm hotel room in my jams whilst eating crisps and packaged chocolate waffles (and I think I chose wisely, because they went to some revolting taco place where my brother couldn’t even eat his food because it had unadvertised mayonnaise all over it. Mayonnaise is one of the things we both detest, but because I don’t eat meat, I find it easy enough to avoid, even in Belgium). Fortunately, we were heading to Flanders the next day, where things are open on weekdays!

  

East Grinstead, Sussex: East Grinstead Museum

I am, as I so often say, motivated mainly by food, and my visit to the East Grinstead Museum is a perfect example of this. We only stopped off because it was on the way to the Kent and Sussex Apple Juice and Cider Centre, which I need to visit every fall to procure cloudy apple juice in an attempt to satiate my autumnal appetites for American-style apple cider (if you get a good cloudy apple, it kind of fills the void, but is nowhere near as full-bodied and delicious as actual cider. Given the prevalence of hard cider here, I still can’t work out why no one seems to utilise all those apple presses to make the soft stuff, but I digress…). I get the impression that East Grinstead got HLF funding at some point in the relatively recent past to redo their museum, both because I had never noticed it before when searching for stuff to do, so it either didn’t exist or looked so unremarkable that I was disinclined to visit; and because the building itself looked relatively new, as did the displays.

  

East Grinstead is a free museum, and we found a car park that was free on Sundays just around the corner, though it appears that the museum itself has limited parking. The museum is all on one level, but the building clearly has an upstairs level (and was purpose built for the museum), so perhaps they only use it for storage or events. Therefore, the museum isn’t all that big, but it is split into two distinct galleries (three, if you count the small display area for art).

  

East Grinstead is remarkable mainly because of the Guinea Pig Club, which was founded here, at Queen Victoria Hospital. The Guinea Pig Club was described as “the most exclusive Club in the world, but the entrance fee is something most men would not care to pay and the conditions of membership are arduous in the extreme,” by their surgeon Archibald McIndoe. Basically, Queen Victoria Hospital was where airmen with severe burns were sent during WWII, and they were guinea pigs in the sense that they underwent radical and pioneering plastic surgery techniques to rebuild their faces. Despite all the pain and mental anguish that these men went through, they still maintained a sense of humour, and thus formed the Guinea Pig Club, primarily as a drinking club, for the men to socialise and talk about their shared experience.

  

Obviously this is an incredible story, and the museum devotes roughly half its space to telling it, including the experiences of some of the men in the club and the surgeons, nurses, and anaesthetists that treated them; and graphic descriptions (and depictions, in the form of wax figures, much to my delight) of the techniques used by McIndoe, including the rather old-fashioned (perfected by Harold Gillies during the First World War) but effective pedicle (see example above), where a strip of skin was cut loose along the bottom and sides, formed into a tube, and stretched and attached to another part of the body, for example, the nose, where a new blood supply would form. Once the new patch of skin had blood flow, the skin would be severed from the original area and reshaped to rebuild the patient’s facial features. While this worked very well, and helped to avoid infection in a pre-antibiotic age (since the inner layer of skin wasn’t exposed to air), it did mean that the patient would have to walk around with their arm attached to their face for a number of weeks (hopefully it was worth it in the end, but you can see why they needed a drinking club!). The residents of East Grinstead did their part to help these men transition back into society – it was known as “the town that didn’t stare,” because the people who lived here made a point to try and treat these men as normally as possible to help their mental recovery, and many of the men said that it was their acceptance by the people of East Grinstead that gave them the courage to resume normal life when they returned home. This was by far the best and most interesting section of the museum, and I really enjoyed hearing the stories of the men, and of course seeing all the wax figure tableaux.

  

The other main gallery of the museum was devoted to the history of East Grinstead, and this was more typical of every local history museum – some local memorabilia, a handful of prehistoric stuff, and some random ye olde artefacts (sorry if I sound less than enthused, but the museum I work for is very much in this vein, so it’s become hard for me to get excited about seeing much the same thing somewhere else, especially if I’m slightly jealous of their much more modern displays). However, this too appeared to have been relatively recently redone, and I did like some of the slightly more interactive elements, like the children’s table full of board games (including Operation, appropriately enough) and the wall of mystery objects where you had to guess their use and then use a mirror to check your answers. I also liked the little Iguanodon figurine (named Iggy) that they used as a sort of mascot on some of the object labels to tell us various facts about the town, apparently chosen because Iguanodon footprints have been discovered in East Grinstead.

  

There was also a small gallery filled with some artwork, as I mentioned earlier, although it was right next to the toilet, so not the easiest place to look around (it actually looked like there might have been more art in an adjacent room, but when I tried the door, it was locked, so perhaps not). But I have to give them props for having a very clean toilet with cute little rhymes in it encouraging visitors to donate to the museum to keep it running (effective too, as I dropped a couple pounds in the donation box on my way out). I also liked all the Guinea Pig Club themed merchandise in the shop, including t-shirts printed with their adorable logo, and especially the stuffed guinea pigs, though I couldn’t really justify buying one. I loved the story of the Guinea Pig Club – I would say that portion of the collection would be the reason to visit, rather than the local history stuff, unless of course you are a resident of East Grinstead (not to be mean about their local history collections, which are perfectly nice, I just think that if you’ve got a story as unique as the Guinea Pig Club, you might as well flaunt it!). 2.5/5.

London: The Imperial War Museum

I blogged about the First World War gallery at the Imperial War Museum almost three years ago, and genuinely had every intention of returning soon after to blog about the rest of the museum…but somehow I’ve only just got around to making that return visit, I guess because Lambeth isn’t really somewhere I frequent (I’ve only been in the vicinity a handful of times since moving away from Elephant and Castle eight years ago).  Although some of the surrounding streets aren’t overly salubrious, the IWM itself is housed in a superb building, as you can probably see. Actually, the building is particularly interesting, because it used to be Bethlem Royal Hospital aka Bedlam, the most infamous psychiatric hospital of them all.  In medieval times, Bedlam was located close to what would become Liverpool Street, but by the early 19th century, space in the City was at a premium, so the hospital moved out to this purpose-built building in Lambeth, and there it remained until 1930, when it moved again to its current home in Beckenham. They knocked down the wings (which is where the wards were), and opened the central administrative hall as the Imperial War Museum in 1936. I don’t know about you, but I would be terrified enough if I was being committed even without being brought to a building this imposing, so I think it works much better as a museum, though its past does admittedly give it a creepy touch that I enjoy.

  

Like all of London’s major museums, the IWM is free and huge. It actually is still really imposing on the inside, even though it’s obviously been redesigned a few times since the ’30s (most recently just a few years ago).  I think the concept of a “war museum” itself is really interesting, because it’s genuinely not a military museum; you’ll find very little about battles and such in here. It’s more about how war impacts society (mainly World Wars 1 and 2, though there is a bit in here on more recent conflicts).

  

Because I already blogged about the First World War gallery, and the museum is so extensive, I decided to skip that section entirely this time around, and start with WWII (I’ll refer you to my earlier post if you’d like to read about their WWI collection). I’d enjoyed their WWI stuff so much that my hopes were high for WWII. Unfortunately, the galleries just didn’t measure up to expectations.

  

The main Second World War gallery was called “Turning Points: 1934-1945” and its intention is to “explore key moments of the Second World War through the connections between people’s lives and the objects on display,” which sounds like it could be a really interesting idea, but somehow it just didn’t work out that way. For starters, the objects were meant to be grouped together in themes like “War on the Way” and “Shifting Sands,” which translated to a few big things, like planes or cars, all displayed together, and then further on, a few more motorcycles or cars or whatever. The themes didn’t really come across very well at all. Another issue was that someone had made the (stupid) decision to make all the object labels in this gallery stickers stuck to the OUTSIDE of the cases.  Well, as you can probably guess, visitors had picked at the edges, because they could (I don’t necessarily think it was malicious or even intentional, because I’m totally the sort of person that will pick at the peeling edges of something without even thinking about it, and other people are probably the same), and some of them were so worn down that whole words were missing from the captions. They only redid this section three or four years ago, and you’d think they would have aimed for labels with more longevity than that. It’s fine if they wanted to use stickers because they were planning on moving objects around a lot, so it would be easy to change the labels, but why not at least stick them on the inside of the case where people couldn’t get at them? It made everything look kind of grubby and cheap.  It was also weird that almost nothing in here was interactive, given how much of the WWI gallery is. I think it would have really benefited from offering something hands-on, because it’s rather boring as is.

 

There were a few interesting objects in here, like a map Rommel had personally plotted military campaigns on, and Montgomery’s car, but I didn’t really get a sense of how the war affected British society except in a little exhibition off in a side gallery, called “A Family in Wartime.” This followed the Allpress family, who originally lived in Southwark (I think) but moved to Wimbledon because of the Blitz. They were fairly lucky in that both of their sons who were old enough to fight made it back home safely, but unlucky in that two of their daughters had congenital heart conditions and died as teenagers (I think they had nine children in total). I enjoyed learning about their family and how the war affected their lives, and particularly liked the doll house version of their Southwark house, made by one of their sons-in-law. They didn’t really seem to have any possessions actually belonging to the family, but they did have objects that were representative of a middle class family at that time, including a litterbug made to look like Hitler (because being wasteful helped the Nazis) that I personally think was way too cute. I get the idea of improving morale by making Hitler look ridiculous, but c’mon, that bug is kind of adorable, and Hitler was pure evil.

  

I was pretty excited for the “Secret War” gallery about espionage, because I am way fonder of old James Bond movies than I should be, given how sexist and racist most of them are (I think it’s because I grew up watching them with my family, and they’re one of the few things we’ll still all sit around and watch together), but this too was disappointing. There was way too much text in here, and actually, too many objects too. I just got sick of looking at them all, and thus probably missed some cool stuff in some of the cases. I did notice there was a letter from Noor Inayat Khan here, however, who you might remember if you read my post on Beaulieu. She was an incredibly brave British spy during WWII who was eventually captured and executed by the Nazis, and her letter was to another female spy back at HQ.

  

“Peace and Security: 1945-2014” had a similar layout to the WWII gallery, only it was dealing with more recent conflicts. I thought some of the objects here were really cool, in particular a suit of armour made by an artist to symbolise the conflict in Northern Ireland, a mosaic of Saddam Hussein that was torn down after his fall from power, a mannequin representing what a victim of a nuclear explosion would look like, and a big chunk of the Twin Towers, but I think the signage overall was again a little lacking.

  

The floor above all this (I think we were only up to the 4th floor at this point) held a few temporary photographic exhibitions that I actually really enjoyed. Two of them were on the conflict in Syria, and some of the photos of everyday life were excellent. There was also an exhibition on Guantanamo Bay, which I thought had the potential to be really interesting, were it not for the relatively poor labels that were both confusing and difficult to locate.

  

I was intrigued by the “Curiosities of War” exhibit, because any time I hear the word “curiosities” I think cabinet of curiosities and my interest is piqued, but this exhibition seemed to be something of an afterthought. To begin with, the layout was really bizarre; because the museum is arranged around an atrium, there is a lot of wasted space, and it was really apparent by the time we got up to this level. There were two super skinny passageways leading off from the gallery space on one end, and they weren’t connected on the other end. So to see “Curiosities of War,” you had to walk all the way down one hallway, come all the way back, walk down the other, and come all the way back again. And because they were so narrow, you literally couldn’t pass someone without making body contact, so if someone was coming the other way, you had to duck into an alcove to let them through. Also, it looked as though the person who made the signs did not arrange the artefacts, because at one point there was a sign about a wooden training horse from WWI, which I had noticed on the complete opposite side (catty corner) of the exhibition, shoved in next to a plane wheel, even though it was presumably supposed to be next to the sign about it where there was indeed plenty of space for it. I’m not sure how they even pulled that one off, but it was pretty lame.

  

The top floor was just home to a gallery about various Victoria Cross and George Cross holders, which was fine (there was a clip from an old movie about spies and some objects made by POWs that I thought were neat), although I think they tried to cram too many people in there, and it was overwhelming to read about them all. I get wanting to honour as many people as possible (even though it wasn’t a complete listing of VCs or George Cross holders as it was; I think only 250 people were featured), but I think the layout could have been better.

And now for the Holocaust gallery. We saved it for last, which was probably a mistake, because it was intense. Not that I thought it wouldn’t be, but I was unprepared for quite this level of intensity (or immersion. Most Holocaust exhibits I’ve seen were relatively small, but this one was on two levels, and we were in there for over an hour).  You couldn’t take photos, for obvious reasons, but it’s the kind of thing that stuck with me nonetheless. This was by far the most comprehensive Holocaust gallery I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been to quite a few over the years. It covered the whole appalling story, from the history of antisemitism in Europe, Hitler’s rise to power (which was unpleasantly reminiscent of recent events in America), and the beginnings of euthanasia of so-called “mental defectives” to the “Final Solution.” Throughout the way, the horror was really driven home by the inclusion of stories of people killed in the Holocaust, including their final letters to family members, which were terribly poignant to read. As if that wasn’t heart-rending enough, there were also toys belonging to children who were killed or who managed to survive through hiding; one boy spent 5 years concealed in a cupboard so small it gave him bone deformities, with only a few toys to play with in the dark (his piano teacher brought him food). There was a scale model of Auschwitz that described in chilling detail exactly what happened to people when they arrived, and a dissection table that came from one of the “hospitals” where they euthanised people. But the two things that disturbed me the most were actually bits of information taken from the signs in here: first, that the Final Solution probably came about as a result of various Nazi officials trying to outdo each other to impress Hitler, and secondly, that the crews of people forced to cremate bodies in Auschwitz were themselves changed over and killed off every four months, so that (in theory) no one would live to tell the world what the Nazis had done. I was taught about the Holocaust in school, of course, and although I remember it affecting me really intensely and giving me nightmares at the time, I think it’s also important to learn about it as an adult, because you do forgot details over time, and I think it affects you in a different way as an adult, when you understand that atrocities aren’t consigned to the past – genocide still happens. I genuinely think everyone should have to confront the horrors of the Holocaust in some way, because I can’t understand how anyone would think it’s OK to go around waving Nazi flags after seeing something like this.

  

So clearly, the IWM is a very mixed bag indeed. The Holocaust and WWI galleries are excellent, the photography exhibits were quite good, and everything else could really use some improvement – more interactivity for a start. It’s great that it’s free, but the level of neglect in some of the areas of the museum was really unfortunate, especially with something as inexpensive and easy to fix as a sticker, and the resulting inconsistencies in the quality of the galleries are too glaring to ignore. My other complaint is that the only toilets in the whole, six story museum are on Floor 0, other than disabled toilets/baby changing stations on most of the other floors. I’m glad that they at least offer those, but I didn’t feel comfortable using them when someone might have needed them more, which meant I had to hold in my pee for a very long time indeed (because I was too lazy to go all the way down and then all the way back up again). I don’t know why a museum this big couldn’t have at least two sets of toilets for everyone, especially when one of the floors was taken up by a big platform under the atrium with nothing in it (seriously, put at least a couple toilet stalls in there). There were odd things going on with the layout of this whole museum, but this was the worst thing for someone with a bladder as small as mine. Anyway, I’d definitely recommend visiting for at least for the Holocaust and WWI galleries, and the others are certainly worth seeing, but if your time is limited, then those two are the ones I’d make a priority, because you could easily spend an entire day or two here if you wanted to see everything in the museum. 4.5/5 for the Holocaust and WWI galleries, but 3/5 for the museum as a whole.

Ostend, Belgium: Atlantikwall Museum

 

Given what a windy day it was, with hints of rain on the horizon, after seeing James Ensorhuis and the kite festival, the only logical thing to do would be to visit an outdoor attraction, right?  Well, anyway, that’s what I did.  If you venture a few miles down the road from Ostend, you’ll find one of the best-preserved sections of the Atlantic Wall built by the Germans during WWII (the wall originally stretched all along the coast from France to Norway, which is pretty impressive, until you bear in mind that it did them a fat lot of good in the end, am I right?), which has now been turned into a whole museum complex that also includes a living history fishing village (knowing my penchant for fishing heritage centres, it may come as a bit of a surprise that I didn’t also visit that).

 

Atlantikwall costs 8 euros, with an included audio guide, or 10 euros if you want to visit the fishing village as well (a saving of 4 euros), but be forewarned that it involves a lot of walking.  Even just getting from the carpark to the museum entrance is a fair hike, and then the museum itself is spread out over a couple kilometres with lots of stairs (though nothing like the 366 in Belfort), and although there are a few bunkers and stuff you can go inside, the vast majority is outside, so pick a nice day for your visit.  I didn’t exactly follow my own advice, but fortunately the rain held off, so aside from it being windy and a bit chilly, it wasn’t too bad in the end.

 

After my boyfriend and I picked up our audio guides, we were initially a bit confused, as a map near the entrance seemed to indicate we had a choice of two different routes: a green and a red, but the arrow signs were all yellow, so perhaps they’ve been consolidated into one route, since we definitely saw everything.  The interesting thing about this section of the Atlantikwall is that it also includes some ruins from WWI (the “ONLY preserved German coastal battery from WWI,” according to their website), so I guess you get more bang for your buck/euro.  You all know by now of my long-running feud with audio guides, but these ones were alright.  They only rambled on for a minute or so at each stopping point, usually the time it took to walk to the next one, so you weren’t left dawdling around for ages waiting for it to finish.

  

This being Belgium, there were of course a fair amount of rather hilarious mannequins (though nothing on the level of my all-time favourite one from Ijzertoren; I still genuinely can’t believe how terrible he looks); I think the soldier on the right has something of Dr. Crippen about him, only with less creepy eyes.

  

You are of course, right on the sea, as you’re reminded every time you step out onto a raised section of the wall and have a look towards the coast, and it really would be quite lovely without all the barbed wire and concrete bunkers.  The stark contrast really helps ram the war home and makes you feel as though you might well have been transported back in time, only with non-threatening mannequins instead of Nazis.

  

I feel as though I should maybe be talking more about all the weaponry laying around, and military history generally, but munitions lie well outside my area of expertise, and the audio guides pretty much tell you all you need to know, being supplemented by actual signs here and there.  There was even a sample of the different horrible obstructions the Germans attempted to put in the way of the Allies, including Rommelspargel, pointy post things named for both Rommel and their resemblance to asparagus.  Rommel himself was actually transferred here for a bit to make improvements, so he was the one responsible for all the additional fortifications, at least until Hitler forced him to commit suicide.

 

Atlantikwall was mercifully nearly deserted the majority of the time we were walking through, although we managed to catch up with some annoying Euro-hipsters near the end (not sure how that worked, because the audio guide should mean that everyone is moving around at roughly the same pace.  Maybe because they kept stopping to flap their jaws instead of just moving along to the next number), which was irritating because it was the one section that did have a lot indoors, and some videos to watch, which I skipped just to get away from all the people.  Instead, I lingered in the storeroom, with its display of tinned sausages and other hilarious yet disgusting German foodstuffs, and copies of the menu that the soldiers were served.

  

In general, I liked Atlantikwall, and I learned a fair bit (how much I’ve retained is another matter entirely, as evidenced by the scarcity of war information in this post, though one thing I did find interesting is that some Eastern Europeans who were opposed to communism volunteered with the Nazis, in the hopes of taking down Stalin, but the Germans didn’t fully trust them, so they were generally given shitty jobs of no major importance to do).  I think it’s fantastic that these pieces of history have been preserved (Belgium in general seems to make a real effort to honour the past, probably because it’s been used as a battleground in so many major wars), and I think the set-up is generally quite good; while we weren’t sure about the yellow arrows at first, as sometimes it felt like we were bypassing stuff, it’s actually arranged in quite a clever way, and the path winds you back around in such a manner that you get to see everything without much backtracking.  I also liked how we were left free to wander and explore (save for the alarm we were warned about if you stray beyond the ropes, leaving me anxious about accidentally triggering it).  So yeah, I suppose it was a pretty worthwhile experience, and something a bit different from all the WWI stuff that dominates most of Belgium (though there’ll be some of that coming soon, don’t worry!).  Maybe I’ll have to return to see that fishing village someday, though if they’re speaking Flemish, perhaps not…  3.5/5.

  

 

Bletchley, Milton Keynes: Bletchley Park

 

If you’re British, odds are good you’re already familiar with the story of Bletchley Park.  If you’re not, however, you might not know about it (I’d certainly never heard of it until I moved to Britain, and I love history), so perhaps a bit of background is in order.  Shortly after WWI, a German engineer invented the Enigma machine – a device that could be used to encode messages, which was basically a typewriter with up to four rotors attached; the code could be changed by changing the setting of the rotors, and the person receiving the message would have to know how to position their rotors to decode it ( I apologise if I’m describing this incorrectly, but I know almost nothing about engineering).  Although this device was initially conceived of for fairly innocuous purposes (its inventor thought that perhaps banks could have a use for it), it was adopted by the German military in the years leading up to WWII.  Obviously, in 1939, when the British entered the war, having the ability to crack the German codes would be extremely useful.  Enter Bletchley Park.

  

Although Bletchley is now quite near to Milton Keynes (the famous “planned city” that was built in the 1960s), during the war, it was kind of in the middle of nowhere, which was one of its virtues.  Far enough from major cities to be an unlikely target of the Blitz, yet near enough to London to allow messages to be carried back and forth, the old country estate seemed an ideal location for MI6 to set up headquarters.  It had to be built in a hurry, so most of the staff had to work in crude huts that were boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter, yet it still attracted some of the greatest minds of the day, including Alan Turing.  (Benedict is set to play him in a film later this year, can’t wait!)  Turing improved a Polish invention, the Bombe machine (named after the pudding, rather than an incendiary device) to help with the decoding process, but it still involved a lot of quick-thinking on the part of the staff, particularly as the German codes changed every day (it helped that a lot of the messages contained standard phrases, like Heil Hitler, which was useful in sussing things out)!

  

Anyway, there were lots of amazing inventions and innovations to come out of Bletchley Park, which I’m sure you can find more about elsewhere on the internet; suffice it to say that the work done here probably helped shorten the war by at least two years.  After the war, the whole Bletchley story remained classified until the ’70s, and the Park wasn’t decommissioned until the ’80s.  It was turned into a museum in the 1990s, which finally brings me to my visit here!

  

It really is a whole complex, so you’ll want to set aside a good few hours for your visit.  Admission is £15 (though English Heritage members get £3 off, woot!), and they offer a number of free guided tours, though we didn’t partake of any.  You enter the park through a museum section with a short film, and an overview of the history of Bletchley (basically what I just did above, only in more detail).  It explained the whole process of breaking codes, which involved not only cracking the Enigma, but obviously required knowledge of German (and later, Japanese) to translate the messages!

  

After that, they hand you an interactive tour device (a step up from the loathed audio guide, since it was a touch screen device, allowing you to skip around and only listen to the stuff you were really interested in, and they even had long and short versions of most clips for impatient people like me!), and you’re left to wander the property.

  

The next building over was also a museum, but this one was deeply technical, about the exact working of the Enigma and the Bombe, and I really couldn’t follow most of what was going on, not being terribly technically minded myself (I’m the complete opposite of my brother, who’s currently getting a degree in mechanical engineering).  However, they also had information on Alan Turing, who I’ve always felt quite bad for (the British government basically stigmatised him for being gay, and effectively destroyed his career, which was certainly a major factor in his suicide a couple years later), including the statue of him, and even his adorable teddy (named Porgy).  They also had a 3D slideshow, which was again incomprehensibly technical, but hey, it was in 3D!

  

The upper floor had some war memorabilia, and memories of life at Bletchley Park, which seemed to either involve delightful entertainments, like sport and films, or else just a crap-tonne of work, I suppose depending on one’s personality (I would have been one of the sad sacks who was miserable and unsociable).  We next headed around the “lake” (more of a pond, really) to the manor house, which looked really grand (and had an awesome griffin thing outside), but was pretty disappointing on the interior.  It smelled musty and was full of chairs, so I assume it’s normally just used as conference rooms and a banquet hall, as there weren’t really any displays inside.

  

There were also a few huts to the left of the mansion, but they were either closed off, or just held small displays, like one on Ian Fleming that was actually fairly interesting (there was also another display on spies inside one of the museums).  There were a couple more huts behind the mansion, which were also closed off, though you could peer inside, and there was a small Polish war memorial hidden back here as well (and what appeared to be a cemetery behind a gate, though there wasn’t any information on that, so I’m not sure what the story is).

  

The huts to the right of the mansion, however, were the ones that had already been restored, so those were pretty cool.  One of them had a bunch of interactive code breaking games, and the other ones were just decorated as they would have been during the war – they even had a re-creation of Alan Turing’s office!  Videos of actors playing the codebreakers were projected on the walls, and it’s worth noting that most of the workers here were women, recruited largely from the upper classes (like Baroness Trumpington) or the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service).  Indeed, the building housing the code-breaking machines was staffed entirely by women.

  

A garage behind the manor house contained the vehicles used by the staff.  Though most of the code-breakers got around town by bicycle, due to rationing, there were quite a few other workers that weren’t involved in code-breaking, but played a crucial role in relaying the resulting messages to the government and military.  Many of these drivers were also women, who got to ride bad-ass motorcycles back and forth between London and Bletchley, often in the dead of night.  Obviously they had phones and telegrams and such back then, but then you ran the risk of your messages being intercepted (since the transmissions from the Germans were being intercepted by the British in the first place), so it was safer to just hand-deliver them.  They also had some Packards that were used by staff.

  

In addition to the main buildings, Bletchley Park contains a lot of smaller museums that aren’t managed by the Trust, but are still included in the price of admission; there’s a radio museum, a cinema museum, and a post office museum, but my favourite by far was the Toy Museum. This place was all kinds of awesome.  It reeked of mothballs (which I kind of like, it reminds me of how my great-aunt’s house smelled) and had so much crap crammed into just a couple of rooms, even old caricature puzzles that showed FDR perched on a stool (unlikely, but I guess a good compromise between standing or showing him in a wheelchair).

  

In addition to old toys (some of which visiting children were allowed to play with), they also had a variety of clothing from the ’40s, with descriptions of the fabrics used and how things were made, which I thought was fascinating (and explained the presence of the mothballs, I have a moth problem myself, and those newfangled “good-smelling” moth repellants they have now simply don’t do the job). I loved all the old dresses, and would happily wear them myself, even if they were made from flour sacks and old parachutes.

  

I also liked all the old cookery booklets designed to help you make the most of your rations, and could have easily spent much longer here looking at everything (I have a Betty Crocker cookbook of my grandma’s from 1950, and it has those same charming illustrations of anthropomorphic food in it, as well as little poems – the one about eggs is unintentionally hilarious).

  

I should mention that there is also a National Museum of Computing right in one of the car parks, which has the Colossus and other early giant computers in it, but apparently they’re engaged in a long-running feud with Bletchley Park, and so it is not included in the admission, but is a separate attraction that costs 5 pounds extra.  For that reason, we did not visit, and I imagine many other people don’t either, but it is there if computers are your primary interest.

  

We spent three hours in Bletchley, and could probably easily have spent more, especially if we’d taken one of the tours.  Although some of the museums were just too specialised for me (I’m still not completely sure how the machines worked, but the museum assured me that I probably wouldn’t unless my mind worked like Alan Turing’s, so I don’t feel so bad about that), and it would have been nice if more had been done with the manor house, as it seemed like a gorgeous building that just needed some attention, overall the day was very enjoyable.  I really liked learning more about the people who worked here, and the amazing work they did, and I think it was worth the long drive up from London (don’t miss the chance to get your picture with the concrete triceratops in Milton Keynes whilst you’re in the area, as seen below).  4/5

  

 

 

 

Kent, UK: Dover Castle

  

After a short drive down the coast from Walmer, we found ourselves at Dover Castle, another English Heritage property, hence another chance to get our money’s worth out of that membership.  If you don’t have a membership pass, Dover Castle is a fairly pricy outing at £17.50.  The castle dates back to the 1160s, during the reign of Henry II, but the oldest buildings on the property are the Roman lighthouse and Anglo-Saxon church.  There are also a series of tunnels; medieval ones under the castle, and a different set that  were constructed for defensive purposes during the Napoleonic Wars, but in more recent history served as the place where “Operation Dynamo,” also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was planned (over 300,000 Allied troops were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk during WWII by a fleet of ships launched from Dover, including many privately owned small craft).

  

As directed by the girl working at the admissions desk, we first headed to those tunnels, since they only take groups of thirty people down at a time, to wait in the inevitable queue.  They also only do tours every half an hour, and the first one was already full, so we ended up having to wait about forty minutes for the “Secret Wartime Tunnels Tour.”  If the tour had been good, I wouldn’t have minded the wait, but it turned out to be incredibly lame.  After being shown a short newsreel, and an informational video about Dunkirk that mainly served to showcase some outdated technology, we were ushered down a long tunnel where graphics appeared on the wall to tell the story of Dunkirk; unfortunately, because we were at the back of the group, we couldn’t actually see what was going on.  We were then allowed to wander the last portion of the tunnels on our own, which included the communications rooms and some supposedly haunted messaging room.

  

I’m not sure why they made such a fuss about it being a “guided” tour, as the guide’s only purpose seemed to be to hustle us along the tunnel; everything else was done by video.  I’m not really sure why they couldn’t just make the whole thing self-guided to avoid the waits altogether, but whatever, it was lame, and I wouldn’t advise waiting for it.  However, the Underground Hospital Tour didn’t have much of a queue when we were there, so if you want to see something underground, I’d probably go with that one – if it is as bad as the other tour, at least you won’t have wasted as much time, plus it’s a hospital, so might intrinsically be more interesting than some bare tunnels (I’m not knocking Operation Dynamo, I think it’s an incredible story, which is why it’s such a shame that it wasn’t told in a more engaging way).

  

We emerged from the tunnels into a gift shop (naturally) and small museum that told the story of the tunnels in more detail, including a collection of British uniforms throughout history.  There were also some splendid views of the coast, and of the famous White Cliffs of Dover from this side.

  

We’d passed an ice cream hut on the way down to the tunnels, and far be it from me to pass up an ice cream, so I grabbed a scoop of mint chocolate chip for the trek up to the castle proper (they do have a “land train” available for the elderly/infirm/just plain lazy, but I needed to burn off that ice cream, so we just walked everywhere.  It really wasn’t that far, and was probably faster than waiting for the land train to rock up).  The Great Tower is ringed by a number of small museums, and we decided to start with those first.

  

The first museum offered an introduction to the Tower, and a video about the early Plantagenets (until I moved to Britain, I always pronounced Plantagenet with a silent “t,” which I suspect was far too French-leaning of me.  However, I still stubbornly persist in leaving off the “t” in filet, and don’t get me started on the pronunciation of “fete”).  The main reason this museum is noteworthy is because of the little sketches of “Roland the Farter,” the court jester.  Considering many of the visitors to Dover Castle are French (on account of all the ferries and the Channel Tunnel; Dover is so close to France that we could only get French radio stations as we neared the coast), I thought the first cartoon pictured above was delightfully cheeky (as is the second, in a more punny way).  Plus, he’s called Roland the Farter, which is hilarious.

  

When we wandered into the Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment Museum, I wasn’t expecting much more than a respite from the cold wind that had suddenly kicked up, especially because the first room was just full of boring plaques.  Happily, this small museum proved to be a treasure trove of terrible mannequins, authentic smells (at least, I think they were authentic smells, it is entirely possible that it might have just stank in there), and even one of those machines I inexplicably love that turns normal pennies into “souvenir” pennies.

  

It was finally time to journey up the many stairs of the centrepiece of the castle, the Great Tower.  The Tower has been decorated to look as it would have during the reign of Henry II, and it is pretty fantastic.  There wasn’t much signage, so I didn’t have a clue where we were wandering to, but that was part of the experience.  Navigating the maze-like interior of the tower helped me understand how the layout would have helped deter would-be invaders, plus it gave the whole thing the air of a grand adventure.

  

We began in the medieval kitchen, because you have to, really, in these types of places, and ventured up to a banqueting room.

  

And made our way through some tunnels to discover a throne room,with even more hidden rooms behind the throne.

  

One of which was a small stone chapel, with lovely small stained glass windows.  There was also some rather plush bedrooms in the tower, and the day had gotten so chilly I would have happily curled up beneath the furs in one of the beds, had I been allowed.

  

Finally reaching the top of the tower, we were rewarded with even more gorgeous views of the coastline, as well as a good peek into the yard below that contained a trebuchet.

  

The trip back down led us into a few more rooms we hadn’t caught on the way up, many of them with costumed actors in who were patiently answering visitors’ questions (fortunately, they weren’t actually re-enacting anything, which I always find slightly cringy).

  

Upon safely reaching the bottom, we decided to tackle yet more stairs by heading down into the medieval tunnels, which were certainly very tunnely, but didn’t have much else to recommend them, so if you’re pressed for time, you can probably give them a miss.

  

I did want to see the Anglo Saxon church, so we popped into that on our way out.  The Roman lighthouse is right next door, so we were able to have a peek inside that as well – it is just a crumbling stone tower (it’s the structure to the right of the church, below).  The church had a little history display set up in the back, and quite a lot of photos of the Queen and various other Royals attending the services there.

  

I very much enjoyed the Great Tower, but the rest of the castle was a mixed bag.  The Royal Regiment Museum was entertaining, the views were very good indeed, but the tunnels were disappointing, and most of the other attractions on the property weren’t terribly noteworthy.  I think Dover Castle has a fascinating history behind it, but I feel like that wasn’t always made as clear as it could have been, and many of the things could have benefited from more signage (but that would probably go against the English Heritage policy of trying to sell guidebooks to everyone, so there you are).  I feel that if I had to pay 17 quid for entrance I would have been kind of annoyed, but as it was, it was a decent outing that didn’t quite live up to the hype of the brochure.  3.5/5

  

 

 

London: Churchill War Rooms, Valentine’s Day Late

  

I’m pretty sure there’s nothing more romantic than spending Valentine’s Day underground, in a WWII era bunker.  In all seriousness, it has to be up there (and I mean this in a non-sarcastic manner) with the Valentine’s Day when my boyfriend took me for afternoon tea and then to the London Dungeons (he knows me so well), so I was really glad we found out about the event before it was sold out!  It did cost £17.50 apiece, but that’s what admission to the Churchill War Rooms costs anyway (though really, £17.50?! I know I complain about admission prices on here a lot, mainly because I am broke, but the Churchill War Rooms admission is really over the top.  Definitely take advantage of the National Rail 2 for 1 offer if you decide to come here!), and I was hoping we’d have time to look around in between all the special activities.

  

I was initially dismayed at the size of the queue to get in, as waiting for entry to a ticketed event typically doesn’t bode well, but the crowds thinned out as we made our way into the bunker.  The special activities on offer included writing a letter to your sweetheart overseas (as the whole premise was obviously that this was during the War; most people made an effort to dress the part, which enhanced the atmosphere), swing dancing lessons in the auditorium, and a champagne bar that was meant to be serving up Churchill’s favourite champagne.  I’m not sure whether it actually was Churchill’s preferred label; it was certainly delicious, but then, it cost as much for a glass as it does for two bottles of the sort of swill we usually buy (only fit for making mimosas), so I wasn’t expecting anything less.

  

Sufficiently emboldened by the champers, we took our places on the dance floor for the next swing dancing lesson, a circle dance called the “Big Apple.”  It was tremendous fun, and convinced me that I need to get over my fear of looking like an idiot and sign up for some swing dancing lessons, as it’s something I’ve always wanted to learn how to do.  Alas, since we were both out there dancing, I’ve no pictures to commemorate the experience, but I’m sure we didn’t look stupid or anything…

  

People were either all starting to dance or head out for the night at this point, so I seized the opportunity to have a look ’round the relatively empty Churchill museum, which followed the timeline of Churchill’s life.  Though you all know I love FDR, I have to concede that Churchill was the master of witticisms, so I was thrilled that the museum had taken the trouble to compile the best ones on a handy touch screen.

 

I really enjoyed looking at all the Churchill and war memorabilia, even though my lingering cold combined with the champagne meant that I wasn’t giving all the displays my usual full attention.  Oh well, I guess I’ll have an excuse to return some day (using my 50% off English Heritage discount of course).

  

In addition to the museum displays, there was of course the bunker, which, whilst nowhere on the scale of Kelvedon Hatch (but then Kelvedon Hatch isn’t built under prime real estate in Westminster), was still enough of a maze to get us confused when trying to find Churchill’s bedroom.  He only spent three nights in the actual bunker, but he stayed fairly often in the aboveground rooms, which were apparently much plusher.   A volunteer regaled us with some amusing Churchill stories, like the time the bunker had to be evacuated because it was filling with smoke, only for the staff to realise that this was because Churchill was sitting on the chimney, smoking a cigar.

  

Churchill’s bedroom contained an authentic cigar, and a chamberpot, so that was exciting too!  The other rooms that were part of the bunker, including the Map Room and various Communications rooms, all had delightful mannequins in them – bonus!  There was also a cafe serving up some tasty looking chips, but the queue was long and there was nowhere to sit, so we abandoned the idea of eating there.  The shop was offering a 10% discount on the night of the event, so I took advantage of the sale to snap up yet more postcards for my ever-expanding collection.

  

This had to have been one of the better late museum openings I’ve attended (even at that price, and you all know I’m a cheapskate, so I must have liked it!), definitely helped along by the dancing and champagne, but I think the Churchill War Rooms are well worth visiting even without a special event on (though I was glad of an excuse to get all dressed up – I swear my hair looked much better before I had to brave 60 mph winds!).   4/5 for the event + museum.  (And for evidence of the extreme windiness that night, please see the picture on the bottom right.)

  

Reigate, Surrey: Reigate Caves

Last Saturday began much like every other weekend – with my boyfriend and I sitting around eating waffles in our jimjams, and debating what to do whilst waiting for vintage episodes of The Simpsons to come on.  Excitingly, it soon became apparent that this wasn’t like every other weekend, as we had actually found a reason to leave the house!  I’m totally a list-maker, though unfortunately, not well-organised enough to keep them all in one location.  One of the many lists I have is on Google Maps, and includes various attractions around Britain I want to visit.  We’ve already been to most of the caves within an easy drive from London, but Reigate Caves were ones we hadn’t visited, due to them only being open 5 days a year.  I happened to check their website for the next open day, not really expecting it to be any time soon, only to find out it was that very Saturday!  With a destination sorted, we hopped in the car, Reigate bound.

The Reigate Caves consist of three separate caves (which aren’t actually caves as such, but old sand mines, which is fairly typical of “caves” in the Weald): Baron’s Cave, which is under the old Castle grounds, and the Tunnel Road Caves, which are opposite each other under (appropriately enough) Tunnel Road.  It was £3 for Tunnel Road Caves, and another £2 for Baron’s Cave, both of which included a guided tour.  The whole enterprise is run by the Wealden Cave Society, who honestly seemed like delightful people.  We began with a tour of the Western Caverns, led by a guide who was seriously pretty great.

He was very laid back, to the point where he would just start talking whenever he got to a point of interest in the cave, whether or not the group was with him.  I thought that was fantastic, because why should everyone have to wait for stragglers?  That way, if people with children wanted to hang back, and didn’t really care about the tour, the rest of us didn’t have to wait for them to catch up.  There was a second guide to bring up the rear, to ensure the stragglers didn’t get completely lost, and help answer questions.  The main guide also reminded me a bit of Chris Packham (they had the same w’s for r’s speech thing going on), which I think is part of why I liked him so much, since I adore Chris Packham, (and agree with him that pandas are completely overrated).  He was clearly very passionate and knowledgeable about the caves, which I always like to see (people with slightly eccentric interests, that is, as I have many of those myself).

The caves are currently owned by a gun club, who normally have target practice in the caves, though obviously not when the tours are going on.  Therefore, the caves were littered with spent casings, and we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the target areas.  I’m no fan of guns (perhaps surprising coming from an American), so I felt slightly uneasy at the start, until it became apparent that no one was going to emerge from a hidey-hole and start shooting at us.  Otherwise, I’d say the dominant feature of the caves was sand, which was apparently also scattered with bits of broken glass, so it’s probably not the best place to wear open toed shoes.

The caves have what is an extensive, yet strangely poorly documented history.  Obviously, their main use was as a source of sand, which was used for glass making, ink blotting, and to soak up spillage on local pub floors, which I’m told is what gave rise to the local saying, “happy as a sand boy,” (which I must start using) as the sand boys would get a free drink at each pub they delivered sand to, thus ending up plastered by the end of the day.  During WWI, they were used to store explosives, which likely would have resulted in the complete annihilation of Reigate had any of them actually gone off. During WWII, the townspeople used it as a bomb shelter, which I also have to question the efficacy of, as sand isn’t the sturdiest material, but thankfully, it was never put to the test.  It seems like mostly what people did in them was carve things into the walls, judging by the enormous amount of graffiti (which included an excellent war-era caricature of Hitler, which I was unable to get a picture of).

Me and some face graffiti

Being man-made, the caves had reasonably high ceilings, so might have more appeal for claustrophobics than the average cave. Though there was a large skull carved into one of the walls, which might manage to freak someone out if the caves themselves hadn’t.  I reckon the tour lasted about 35-45 minutes, after which we entered the Eastern Caverns, which were self-guided (though naturally, required hard hats).

HAA!

The Eastern Caverns detailed more of the history of the caves with the use of posters (though our guide had already covered most of it during the tour), and featured things like a recreation of a bomb shelter (complete with scary sound effects), a Cold War room, and a men’s urinal trough.  I think it was meant to be more of a “spooky” experience, as they had fake bats hanging throughout for children to count, and little signs with a ghost on them, which is of course exactly my cup of tea (Earl Grey, two sugars and a splash of milk).  It even had authentic smells (as did the stairs leading down to Tunnel Road, come to think of it) thanks to a paraffin lamp, which also had the effect of making the air authentically smoky.

   

Finally (after procuring a cookie sandwich from a local bakery, as there was no ice creamery on the high street.  Get on that, Reigate!), we hiked up the hill to Baron’s Cave, following the directional bat signs.  We were given lamps this time, in lieu of hard hats, and caught up with a group who had just begun the guided tour.  This guide was rather dour compared to the first one, but he was still informative (and was quite stern with an exceptionally bratty child, which I appreciated).  Baron’s Cave was originally constructed in the 11th century as part of Reigate Castle, and was probably used primarily as a wine cellar, and alternate exit from the castle.  It is also rumoured to have been the meeting spot for the barons on their way to Runnymede to sign the Magna Carta (hence the name), which is pretty cool.

As such, although it was much smaller than the other caves, it had even older graffiti, including carvings of a horse and cow.  Most of the stuff we saw was from the 18th century, although much of it goes back even further, but has been covered over by newer carvings.  Other than the graffiti, the main attractions were a staircase that once led to a pyramid on the castle grounds, but now leads to nothing (though the pyramid is still there, and you can go up and see it!), the wine cellar room, and a random T-Rex.

You can just see him hiding in the back. Rawr!

I’m happy we discovered the open day in time to go, because the Reigate Caves were a very nice experience.  I’m rating them as 4/5, and certainly better than Chislehurst Caves.  I think the fact that the Cave Society run the tours help turn it into a quality experience, as they clearly have a vested interest in all things underground.  The only other open days this year are the 13th July, 10th August, and 14th September, so I’d definitely recommend heading down to Reigate on one of them to take in the cavey goodness.