The plan for today was to get up extremely early and head down to an open morning at the Met Office HQ outside Exeter. However, it meant getting out of the house by about 5:30pm, there was going to a 6+ hour round trip involved for a two hour event and it wasn’t entirely clear where to park when we got down there. We decided to stay in bed a bit longer and do something else instead.

That something else ended up being a trip to Bletchley Park, a vital centre of Allied cipher breaking in WWII and a key part in the development of modern computing. Looking up the details online this morning, it turned out to be cheaper to sign up as a ‘friend’ (go any time during the year and take a guest) than to buy two tickets (both of which do allow free entry for a year but only for the original ticket purchasers). What we missed was that this was their ‘1940s Vintage Weekend’ – this meant it was very busy but did give the unexpected bonus of lots of guests wandering round in period costume.

It is a fascinating place to explore and I look forward to making some return visits at quieter times (not least so I can play on all of the interactive displays). Geek heaven!