It’s been confirmed that the start and finish of the Ocean Globe Race 2023 will be in Southampton, UK. The Ocean Globe Race (OGR) is organised by the highly experienced ocean race organiser, Don McIntyre, who is also responsible for the Golden Globe Race (GGR). Both races...
These days, the huge fortified bunker built by the Germans in 1941 to protect its U-boats, is no longer referred to as the “U-boat base” or “the U-boat pens”. Instead they simply call it the ‘submarine base’, maybe to disassociate it from its origins, but we all...
The Bentley Speed 8 was an Autosport Award Winning Le Mans Prototype race car. It was based on the EXP Speed 8* which first raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2001 using a 3.6 litre V8 engine from the Audi R8**. It was Bentley’s...
Remember those times when you had to dust the Airfix models suspended from your bedroom ceiling, without breaking anything or dislodging them and sending them plummeting to the floor? Well, at it’s pretty much the same thing at the RAF Museum Midlands (Cosford)… only on a larger...
The Museum of the Liberation of Paris, in Paris, tells the story of the occupation of Paris in the Second World War, its resistance, and its eventual liberation in Aug 1944. It’s not a museum loaded with artefacts, most of the displays are reproduced historic photographs, documents...
The SS Keewatin museum ship, an Edwardian Great Lakes passenger steamer, is moving from her current home in Port McNicoll on Lake Michigan to the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston on the St. Lawrence River. The 103m long ship was purpose built for the...
Bicester Heritage’s Flywheel, a 2-day festival of classic vehicles and historic aircraft, will have a special visitor this year. The sole-surviving airworthy Bristol Blenheim L6739 will be leading the aviation display on their grass airfield. Bicester Heritage is a collection of 50 different businesses specialising in historic...
A new war movie, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, is expected to be in cinemas next year. Directed and co-written by Guy Ritchie, and starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González & Henry Golding, most movie reports describe it as an action spy film. That’ll be because it’s about...
Alauda Aeronautics, the Australian company who have been developing the new sport of electric flying car racing, have moved from testing fullscale racing drones, to the next stage, the Airspeeder Mk4 – for human pilots. The Mk4 is the world’s fastest electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL)...
The Last Hill is a new book by Robert Drury and Tom Clavin about a little-known fierce battle fought in December 1944 to capture a strategic hill in the Hürtgen Forest on Germany’s border. The 400 metre (1,315ft) steep-sided ‘Hill 400‘ lies 5 kilometres inside the German...
The famous toy brand, Matchbox®, now owned by Mattel, is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. It’s not obviously ‘cornerstone content’ for Mechtraveller, but it does have a military history and engineering aspect to it… and seriously, who doesn’t love Matchbox vehicles?! It started with engineer Jack...
The Automobili Lamborghini Museum, just outside Bologna, officially reopened on the weekend following a redesign and new layout. The reopening marks the start, of Lamborghini’s 60th anniversary celebrations. The museum has changed its name and been entirely remodelled, both in its layout and design, and in its...
Saint-Nazaire is an industrial port city and its history is inextricably bound up with its ship building industry. So it is no wonder that visitors are keen to see what goes on at the massive Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard, not least because its giant ‘products’ dominate the...
Parham Airfield Museum is actually two museums rolled into one. For the most part it is a memorial museum for the USAAF 390th Bomb Group who were based here during WW2, but it also houses the Museum of the British Resistance Organisation – one of Britain’s best...
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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