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...
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....
Imperial War Museum (IWM) – Duxford is primarily an aircraft museum, but the westernmost building is not, like the others, a giant hanger full of aircraft. Instead it is where the lion’s share of the IWM’s military vehicle collection is displayed – in the Land Warfare building....
Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome, near Maldon in Essex, has won £4.3m of National Lottery funding that will enable it to be transformed into a major visitor attraction. The near-complete example of a First World War aerodrome, untouched and largely forgotten for 60 years, was built in...
If there’s one thing a visit to the Culloden battlefield reveals, it’s what a poor choice of ground Charles Edward Stuart (aka ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) selected for the last major battle fought on British soil. It is flat and open moorland, that’s a start. But, given that...
This weekend, Virgin Trains set up a photo-opportunity event for rail enthusiasts – four generations of trains travelling side by side on the East Coast Line. Of course, it was also a marketing opportunity to show off Virgin Trains’ new Azuma, alongside two present-day trains, and the...
The National Army Museum will be opening its doors to the public on Thursday (30 March) after a £23.75m redevelopment that sees the building transformed from what the Director General, Janice Murray, described to me as a gloomy warren “rather like a car park”, to a bright...
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...
There are a number* of popular and academic explanations for the invention of the “Jolly Roger” flag with its skull & crossed bones motif. However this isn’t usually included among them. The 14th century (originally) church of St. Nicholas in the parish of Deptford on the south...
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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