After Alan Turing designed a machine to break the Enigma code, the staff at Bletchley Park had around three thousand intercepted German messages a day to deal with. To catalog and organize them in order to extract useful intelligence, they recruited librarians (generally female, as was most of the Bletchley Park staff) from all over the country. That’s right, bitches, WWII was won by a gay guy and a bunch of librarians.

OK, there were other people involved, but historians estimate that the work done at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two years. From the start the operation ran with typical British precision.

The original exuberant Victorian Gothic mansion…

with its elegant library…

delightful period details…

and excellent tea room…

was soon surrounded by a series of utilitarian sheds…

including one containing Alan Turing’s office.


I suspect the tea room and the note from Turing are later additions. Not many of Turing’s actual possessions and paperwork actually survive, though they do have his wristwatch and teddy bear on display. In fact most of the displays at Bletchley Park are reconstructions, as the place was decommissioned in 1946, and nobody was allowed to talk about it for thirty years.

So this is the villain of the piece, the Enigma machine (not a reconstruction). For Enigma connoisseurs, this is the four-rotor German naval version rather than the easier to break three-rotor army version.

This is Turing’s machine that broke the code. This one is a reconstruction, but it is as close to the original as possible, even down to using the same lubricating oil. It took twelve years to build. It’s a good job the WWII engineers were a bit faster than that or WWII might still be going on. Several hundred of the originals were built, including about a hundred built by NCR in the US, and used in Washington, DC.

It’s bigger on the inside.

Of course, that is not all of Bletchley Park’s military heritage. Here is one of the Bletchley battle swans disguising itself as a pillow, but ready to pounce should a U-boat turn up in Bletchley Pond.

This was our first outing on the bicycles. Most of the way was along the velocipedal superhighway known as National Cycle Route 6. It ran part of the way through a pleasant park with a fine view of a windmill.

Paula also noticed an archery butt and commented she was glad the people of the Greater Bletchley Area were prepared in case the Vikings come back.

Back at the boat we met up with an old friend, Colin Fine. Thanks for going out of your way to visit us Colin, and hope you can stay longer next time.