This is an interesting standalone exhibit in one of the outbuildings on the Beaulieu estate (site of the National Motor Museum) in the New Forest. It’s a Welbike – a small, parachuteable, motorbike designed for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in WW2. As the blurb in the...
Bristol’s latest attraction, ‘Being Brunel’, a new museum dedicated to the genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was opened to the public this weekend. The £7.2m museum sits on the dockside next to his marine masterpiece, SS Great Britain on Bristol’s Harbourside, and incorporates his Dock Office from...
The home of the Museum of the Infantry Regiments of Berkshire and Wiltshire is The Wardrobe* – one of the splendid 15th century buildings on The Close that surround Salisbury Cathedral. For that reason, and because British Army regiments have a habit of amalgamating, merging, emerging and...
What was the average failure rate of aerial bombs in the Second World War, and whose were better – the USAAF, RAF, Luftwaffe, Russian VVS, Regia Aeronautica, or maybe Japan’s IJAAS? I’m wondering because I came across an interesting statistic in Ian McLachian’s book of Eighth Air...
This year is the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, and that moment finally came with the signing of the Armistice in a railway carriage in the middle of a wood 80 kilometres north east of Paris on 11th November 1918. Yesterday, after...
The long-awaited reopening of The Museum of War and Peace took place in Novion-Porcien in the French Ardennes at the end of last month, in this 100th anniversary year of the conclusion of The First World War. The French Ardennes has been at the heart of European...
This clock in Salisbury Cathedral is thought to be the world’s oldest… that is still working! Once again it was the Dutch who were working at the cutting edge of technology (remember, their engineers were all over the UK at the start of the middle ages building...
The Grassmayr Bell Foundry in Innsbruck, Austria, is one of the world’s oldest factories, and they do factory tours! “We think of bells as living things, each with its own personality”, says Monika Unterholzner, whose family, the Grassmayrs have been making bells in Innsbruck since 1599, “and...
When it opened to the public on Thursday (1st Feb), the Jebel Jais Flight zip line in Ras al Khaimah leapt into the record books as the World’s Longest. Who is now second? Well, the zip line business is full of superlatives – Fastest, Biggest drop, Highest...
The Henry Ford had a record-setting year in 2017, welcoming over 1.77 million visitors. What is it? Well, it’s not exactly a museum or attraction. It describes itself as a “history destination that explores the American experience of innovation, resourcefulness and ingenuity that helped shape America”. Located...
This is one of the latest variations of Supermarine Spitfire and this particular one was built right at the end of WW2, in June 1945. Spitfire TE462 can be found on static display at The National Museum of Flight, Scotland. Truthfully, she’s my least favourite version of...
Work is starting this year on a £5m museum to tell the story of the Royal Navy in Plymouth. It’s part of a 12-year plan by the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) to highlight the role and heritage of its branches in their key locations....
After six years of planning and construction a new state-of-the-art cable car made its inaugural journey today on the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. The new cable car replaces the old Eibsee cable car* that has been taking up to half a million passengers a year up the...
Perfect for petrol-heads! Saxony in Germany is highlighting new developments at two of its automobile visitor attractions for 2018. They suggest 2018 is the right time to explore Saxony as a place where automobile history was written, by heading first to the small town of Zwickau, which...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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