Bletchley Park

We arrived in Bletchley Park at roughly 10:20.  It was really hot especially compared to the bus.  Apart from the awkward lining up at the start (so we didn’t trap anyone on the bus) it was really fun!

First we went to a decoding workshop.  We found out that Morse Code was extremely fast across the radio in the war and if you could read it I envy you!  We learnt how the Enigma Machine worked and even got to type on one! The different ciphers we learnt were actually fun to decode and the person who taught us made it really enjoyable. Did you know there are 103, 484, 623, 446, 804, 960, 360, 000 different combinations on an Enigma Machine? 

We went to a lecture theatre to learn about the history of Bletchley Park and what it was like to be someone working there in WW2.  As the whole operation was a secret when you went home (after 6 years away) you couldn’t tell anyone what you had been doing! This caused families to be disappointed as they thought the code breakers did nothing during the war.

Next we were able to explore around Bletchley Park.  We went into a hut people used to work in.  They were quite cramped.  The typewriters still worked (although they didn’t have any ink) and were started writing on them.  We also saw the real Bombe machine used to help crack the Enigma code. We had split into 3 groups and my group got to sit in a HUGE deckchair which was pretty funny.

Bethan and Ellen