Milton Keynes

Trip Day 6 - Saturday, February 22nd - London -> Milton Keynes

Where????? It's a town around 50 miles NNW of London.

Why? Because that's where Bletchley Park is.

What's Bletchley Park? During the second World War, my personal hero, Alan Turing, AKA the father of modern computer science and the guy who envisioned artificial intelligence, designed a computer, called The Bombe, that broke the encryption of messages sent by the Enigma coding machine used by the Germans. His contribution probably ended the war early by about 2 years. So yeah, I totally geeked out. 

I rented a car at Heathrow and drove up to Milton Keynes. I struggled a bit with the roundabouts, especially since the car kept interrupting Google Maps with its dinging when the speed limit changed (hopefully fixed).

I booked a room at the Hilton Doubletree in Milton Keynes, just minutes away from Bletchley Park. It is a unique hotel built AROUND a soccer stadium. I specifically got rooms facing away from the pitch. I stopped at Ikea around the corner to buy night lights with British plugs.

I headed to the first part of my tour, which was the National Museum of Computing and included a demonstration of The Bombe. There were some machines there of the type I used around 1975 and going forwards through the 80's.  

Afterwards, I headed to Tenpin Milton Keynes, but it was a Saturday, and even at 4 PM, the first lanes available were at 10 PM, so I passed. Interestingly, you no longer have to wear bowling shoes! Very strange. 

Then I went to Costco and had a slice of their pizza and a soda. Prices seem very similar to ours, some things less and some things more. 

Trip Day 7 - Sunday, February 23nd - Milton Keynes -> Croydon



I went on a tour at Bletchley Park and learned about the complexity of the operation. At one point, they had 9,000 people working there in 3 shifts 24 hours a day. Everything was compartmentalized so that folks really didn't know what they were working on. After the war, the place was dismantled so that nobody would know what had taken place there and it wasn't until the late 70's and early 80's it became public knowledge.  

I definitely did not have enough time and I want to go back. I bought an annual membership, so can go back for "free". After flight, car, and hotel, I will save about $30!!!

Because of other plans, I didn't spend the night but drove to Croydon.