The Type 21 frigate and veteran of the Falklands War, PNS Tariq (ex-HMS Ambuscade) is expected to return to her birthplace on the Clyde sometime next year, to become a ship museum. HMS Ambuscade was built by Yarrow Shipbuilders on the Clyde 1n 1973 and served with...
The Dunkirk Maritime and Port Museum (Musée Maritime & Portuaire de Dunkerque) tells the history of France’s third largest port, its workers, its ships, and its seamen. “Wait! What? Third largest?” That may come as a surprise to some, because to most people, especially anglophiles, Dunkerque or...
Not many people outside France have heard of Puy du Fou*. Those international visitors who discover it, almost always become fans for life. The 500 acre park in the Vendée region of France, packed with extraordinary attractions, refers to itself as a historical ‘theme park’ with period...
Over 300,000 historic items from the Science Museum Group* collection have been carefully moved into a new facility at the National Collections Centre in the Science and Innovation Park near Swindon in Wiltshire. The new Hawking Building, named after Prof. Stephen Hawking, is not a museum. It...
The Calais Memorial Museum (Le Musée Mémoire 39-45 de Calais) is housed in a large (94m long) German WW2 concrete bunker in the middle of the Saint-Pierre park in downtown Calais. The bunker was a command post, built in 1941 for the Kriegsmarine (German Navy). Hidden among...
The ‘Bullecourt 1917, Jean & Denise Letaille Museum’, to give it its full name, is the home of an evocative collection of WW1 artefacts collected and preserved by Bullecourt farmer and former mayor, Jean Letaille and his wife Denise. Jean had been finding battlefield relics in his...
Engineers at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu are working hard to bring one of the classic cars in their collection back to life – the extraordinary record-breaking Sunbeam 1000hp. See: The car and the story so far – Back in January the museum began fund-raising for...
The huge World War II underground site in a clay quarry at Mimoyecques was the secret location intended for several batteries of German ultra long range superguns, Hitler’s V3 weapon, aimed at London. The V-Weapon Programme The Third Reich’s propaganda ministry first mentioned a sinister programme of...
The London Transport Museum has a huge collection of fascinating vehicles, artefacts, documents and memorabilia covering, not only the technical history of London’s growing transport networks from the 19th century and earlier, but also many of the social changes that developed alongside them. The collection was started...
You could say, the Newark Aviation Museum is having a bit of a lie down! The museum has just been loaned the extraordinary Gloster Meteor F8 Prone, which has been on display at the RAF Museum, Cosford* for many years. The Meteor F8 Prone was built in...
If all is going as planned, the giant Iowa-class battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) is on her way back down the Delaware River today, returning to her permanent mooring on the Camden waterfront after a 91 day visit to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for maintenance and repair....
The Omaha Beach Memorial Museum (Musée Mémorial d’Omaha Beach), focuses on the D-Day landings at Omaha and Pointe du Hoc. It’s not a particularly large museum (1400m²) but it is well laid out and has some interesting artefacts, documents and photos. It’s location, halfway up the Les...
Lightweight sports car manufacturer, Caterham, has opened its new factory. Still located in Dartford, Kent, the new state-of-the-art building will be home to Caterham’s production, engineering, motorsport and commercial teams. A multi-million-pound investment from owners VT Holdings – one of Japan’s largest retailer groups – will see...
For those who have been wondering what will happen to the 1,475 silhouettes of World War 2 military personnel currently standing on the slope in front of the British Normandy Memorial, Normandy*; the answer is, they will move to the National Trust’s Stowe Gardens in Bedfordshire. It’s...
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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