The clock museum, or ‘Musée de l’Horlogerie’, in Saint-Nicolas-d’Aliermont presents a really interesting social and industrial account of the rise and partial decline of a town focused on a single technology. Back in the 1950/60s, Saint-Nicolas-d’Aliermont was renowned in France as a centre of light engineering, particularly...
“Do many English people know where Nelson lost his arm?” asked my guide, Darío. My kneejerk response was almost ‘Of course! Everyone knows it was here on Tenerife!’ But then it occurred to me… actually, hardly anyone knows it was at the battle of Santa Cruz de...
Lotus is reopening its Hethel production facility to the public. Factory tours at the ‘home of Lotus’ will start on Monday 4th April 2022. Lotus has been making performance cars at Hethel, just outside Norwich in Norfolk, since 1966. In November 2017 they suspended their factory tours...
The Morgan Motor Company has just today, unveiled its latest model – The Super 3, a 3-wheeled sports car with 21st century design & tech. Morgan, now 113 years old, was famous from the outset for its range of three-wheeled sports cars, which they continued to make...
I-124 was a WWII Japanese submarine that was sunk with all hands (80 crew) by Allied forces on 20 Jan 1942 while on a mine-laying mission in the Beagle Gulf, Australia. She lies in 46 metres (150 ft) of water, 84 kilometres north-west of Darwin, NT. In...
The city of Erie in Pennsylvania on the east bank of Lake Erie, is considering the creation of a new ship museum using a Cold War era, Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate. The connection is Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the 19th century American naval commander, who...
The ‘We Have Ways to Make You Talk’ podcast has become hugely popular with WW2 history fans, experts and historians alike since it began in March 2019. Last weekend many of them gathered in some fields near Silverstone, Buckinghamshire, for the first 2-day ‘We Have Ways Fest’...
The Rotonde Ferroviaire (‘railway roundhouse’) at Montabon in La Vallée du Loir* is very much a ‘work in progress’ and it is going to be fabulous in a few years. The roundhouse and turntable were originally built in 1891 on the edge of the village of Montabon...
The Battle of Agincourt Museum, or le ‘Centre Azincourt 1415’ as it is officially named, was redesigned, expanded and improved, a couple of years ago. It is now a centre of discovery and learning for all age groups with a mission to explain the background and events...
Italy’s Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini, has announced the winner of a technical tender to design and build a new stage floor for the 2,000 year old Colosseum. The original wooden arena floor covered an underground network of rooms and corridors, which housed the waiting animals, gladiators...
The French seaside town and ferry port was expecting its famous mechanical dragon to be operating in the build up to Christmas and New Year, but COVID-19 struck again and so the Compagnie du Dragon has been using the downtime for a bit of maintenance. I got...
Last week the U.S. National Park Service announced $2,208,110 in grants from the American Battlefield Protection Program to protect 169.03 acres of America’s Civil War battlefields. Unlike the UK, where so many of our battlefield sites are already lost to history, or under threat from developers (See...
The Salis Flying Museum (Musée Volant Salis) has an amazing collection of around 50* historic aircraft at its hilltop airfield, 35 kms south of Paris. It’s the drip trays you notice. Drip trays are a rare sight in most aviation museums because, before they go on static...
Keen to reconnect with its fanbase, Ducati is reopening its museum today (5 Oct) at their motorcycle factory in Borgo Panigale, Bologne, Italy. The museum’s new coronavirus protocols mean that visitors have to book online and register a specific date/time slot in advance. The 15-min time slots...
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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