An incredible day!

My husband and I had a brilliant time at Bletchley Park today. It was amazing to learn not only about the codebreakers' work during World War II but also what life was like for them. I hadn't realised that so many thousands of people had worked there and although everyone now knows the huge contribution Alan Turing made, there were so many others who also helped create the first computers. I still don't understand how they managed to think up and build such incredibly complex machines, which just looked to me like a lot of light bulbs and dials! I also didn't know that messages in many different languages, including Japanese, were deciphered. Everyone who worked there seems to have been unbelievably talented.

It was quite overwhelming actually being there, especially standing in Alan Turing's office. This is his teddy bear, Porgy, which he used to practice his lectures in front of. We had a lovely afternoon tea in the Mansion House, there was an opera singer doing a live performance in the garden and there was even a fly-past by a Lancaster bomber (see 'extras') but I liked Porgy the best.