The National Railway Museum in York is just one of those key landmark museums in the UK, like the Science Museum in London, or IWM Duxford, that you have to see… and you don’t have to sacrifice any ‘me time’ away from your family or partner to...
Zeroing in on central Wiltshire for a weekend escape to the country has opened my eyes to a time in history that, when I lived there, seemed to have passed me by. Staying in Marlborough, a town with the widest high street in the UK and a...
I had heard of the Japanese WW2 balloon bomb campaign, but until I was reading David Hambling’s new book, Swarm Troopers – How small drones will conquer the world *, I hadn’t been aware that there had been civilian casualties. In fact these were the only deaths...
I’ve got a special place in my heart for the Yorkshire Air Museum. I visited a lot of aircraft museums this summer (well… four!) and they’ve all got amazing exhibits and displays to talk about, but the Yorkshire Air Museum made me the happiest. There’s something special...
Nobody visits Stockholm, for business or pleasure, without visiting the Vasa Museum, and that’s as it should be – the Vasa is, without doubt, one of the great treasures of the world. The story The Vasa was King Gustavos Adolphus’ brand new flagship for the Swedish Navy...
The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, has been working with Microsoft to digitise the interiors of some of its aircraft. It means that visitors to the museum, and to the museum’s website, can wander through the cockpit and interiors on the Surface Pro tablets carried by...
The Air Museum at Duxford, one of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) sites, is probably the most important, ‘must-see’ aircraft museum in the UK. If you haven’t been, you really should, it is excellent. There are a number of things that set it apart. Firstly, its history....
This is a memorial I stumbled across outside a church in Nottinghamshire a year ago. There’s not a great deal of information on the memorial itself but thanks to the efforts of a number of people who have been diligently researching the loss of Lancaster W4270 with...
If you are anywhere near the city of Chartres (SW of Paris) on 17 September, you should see the Festival of Lights (Fête de la Lumière) that night. It marks the climax of the 2016 season (16 Apr – 08 Oct) which sees many (27) of Chartres...
For some nationalities, like us Brits, it’s a little hard to understand the role of France’s customs force, les Douanes. We have customs officers standing around at airports & ports, checking bags, opening shipping containers, and so on, but they are viewed as bureaucrats or government officials....
With innovative companies like Saab, Bofors, Volvo and Scania, the Swedes have come at engineering & design from a different angle to everybody else.
What's not to like about the pure application of turbines, gears and cogs?
Armémuseum , the Swedish Army Museum, is a traditional capital city style museum in an impressive historic building in the centre of Stockholm, but although there’s lots of interesting exhibits & displays, I found it a little disappointing. It’s a shame, because they really have gone to some...
With over 200 armoured vehicles on permanent display, and another 680 in its inventory, the Musée des Blindés Saumur, has the largest collection of armoured vehicles in the world*. It’s been on my list of museums to visit for some time and I wasn’t disappointed. Its roots...
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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