A visitors re-action!
Bill Ridgeway <bill-8wL/[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.science.cryptography.bletchley-park |
|---|---|
| Organization | Computer Solutions |
| Message-ID | <004201c54bf7$95027a20$31cc4d51@computer1> |
The following is copied verbatim from uk.rec.subterranea. If you look beyond the language at the sentiment it just may be a reasonable description of a visit to BP. Which reminds me to say that for anyone thinking they really must go to Bletchley Park to learn how the code was cracked, don't bother. Its the most appallingly bad value museum in the country. Having screwed you for about £15 as a single visitor going by car, they will pressure you into doing some silly form so they can reclaim the tax on your entry 'fine'. After that, they direct you round to a car park that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, with no clue as where to go from there. You stumble around hoping to find signs of intelligent life, and then you come across the room with the famous reconstructed electro-mechanical computer - only there'll likely be a sign across the door saying 'no public admittance' so, feeling cheated already, you wander downhill a bit more and find a 'radio museum' or somesuch, so you try the handle, only to find its locked, so you look around and find a model railway club in one of the huts, and then you find a room with the 'bombes', which were something to do with the code breaking process but you'll never find any clue as to how and why they did whatever they did, in any case they're mock ups left over from the Enigma film, and then, Lo!, you think your search is over ... you have found the famous house ... so in you go, only much to your dismay you find the upstairs is shut to visitors, and the downstairs hasn't really got anything in it either apart from maybe some busy-body telling you to move along outside again because the house has been booked for a private function and, by the way, why haven't you got you visitor's sticky badge on. By this time you are of course perfectly at liberty to shout, why just you don't shut the fuck up you silly ugly cow or else I shall bash you over the head with my camera. (In fact, why not just do that anyway). Then, you wander round a bit more, finding everything shut, or open but with a sign on it saying no public admittance, or it will be full of a collection of china or something bizarre. The one saving grace is a small but rather excellent collection of Dinky and other childrens toys from the WWII era - too good in fact to be left at an undeserving place like this. Oh, and the guided tour, presented with a handheld megaphone type thing without any batteries in it, has highlights such as 'during the war, a bomb dropped over there'. All in all a dreadful dreadfully disappointingly appalling experience. DON'T ENCOURAGE THE LOSERS - DEMOLISH IT, REDEVELOP THE PLACE, USE THE FUNDS TO START A PROPER MUSEUM. QUAINT PICTURES ON TV AND PRINTED MATERIAL OF PEOPLE GOING INTO THE FAMOUS HOUSE ARE A CONFIDENCE TRICK - THEY JUST WANT TO TAKE & WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THEIR OWN SILLY LITTLE EGOS. I was really annoyed and saddened.