It’s going to be another short one today. I’ll backfill in the next couple of days once I have a little more time on my hands. These first few days are frantic!
Imperial War Museum
The bulk of today was spent at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. It’s a museum sponsored by the federal government here and it’s got multiple locations. It’s similar to the Smithsonian’s being split up into multiple buildings, but IWM is only focused on the wars the United Kingdom has fought in.
IWM Duxford was an airbase in WWI and WWII. I believe it’s still an active airfield as well. It’s by far the biggest air museum I’ve ever been to, which is saying something. The airbase played a major role in the Battle of Britain, where Germany attempted to gain air superiority over southern England in 1940. Lots of British Hurricane pilots and Spitfire pilots were scrambled here. I believe the base also launched Lancaster bombers and B-17 Bombers later in the war.
Nearly all of the originally buildings are intact. The British Government has classified all of them as historically significant with some being considered important enough to be maintained in perpetuity. The old hangers are now split up into several sections: big planes, restorations, private/mechanical, American air, Battle of Britain, and land warfare. It took about 6 hours to get through every building.
It was really interesting to see so many historical aircraft in such good condition, all in one place. There were more Spitfires than I could count and at least one of every major American plane that flew in the war. The restoration building was particularly neat, as there were several workers painting fuselages and rebuilding engines. Though not with every plane, one of the museum’s main goals is to restore old aircraft to running condition, not just presentation condition.
Which leads into the coolest thing about IWM Duxford. All day, museum pilots would pull various aircraft out of the hangars and fly them. To see a Spitfire and an ME109 dive over the airfield was incredibly cool. There were tons of photographers camped out all day taking pictures of 80+ year old planes flying. I wish Kaden was here! He would’ve gotten some great ones.
I also forgot to mention that yesterday was the 80th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day. It’s a big deal in the UK, so there’s been all kinds of WWII and veterans stuff going on around the country. What a great time for this trip.
Travel struggles
For every thing that went super well yesterday, something went wrong today lol. I managed to twist my ankle halfway through my time at the museum. I also had trouble with my credit card for a couple of hours, so I ended up walking over halfway to my guest house, which was 3 miles from the train station. After a long day at the museum, that was pretty rough. Then, after I checked in for the night, I went out to get food. First thing I found was a fish and chips shop. Great! She asked what I’d like, I said fish & chips. She asked “small or large fish” and I went with the large since I skipped lunch. She asked “small, medium, or large chips” and I said medium because that’s a reasonable amount of fries. She then proceeded to give me this monstrosity.
The picture doesn’t do it justice at all. What you see is, no exaggeration, probably 6-7 potatoes worth of fries and a 14 inch piece of cod. I think this meal could feed 4-5 people. The bag was easily 4 lbs of food.
Oh! Today was also the first time I ever did laundry in a hotel sink. We’ll see tomorrow how good of a job I did.
Conclusion
Alright, I’m signing off for now. If you’re interested, I will be coming back to this post to fill a bunch more out. Tomorrow I’m visiting CS Lewis’s home and garden. I’ll probably poke around Oxford University and the churches here a bit. I’m going to try to take it a little slower tomorrow. Til then!