What Else Has Happened?

 Well, since you asked, I'm recently home from one of my lovely girlfriend & I's "little holidays", she'd booked a night time photography event at the "Navy Wings" hangar at Yeovilton, so we found a hotel - The Poachers in the amusingly named Piddletrenthide, which actually does sit astride the river Piddle & visited the Fleet Air Arm Museum on day one, the night shoot followed on from that, then Athelhampton House on day two & The Tank Museum on day three.

I've mentioned before on this organ that the FAA museum is very good indeed & it still is. As we'd been before we were able to spend a little more time looking at things we may have passed by on previous visits. Should you go there search out the Skua display,

The Blackburn Skua was an early attempt at a "multi role" aircraft, they were popular in the mid thirties, but the roles were usually mis-matched, so the Skua was a carrier borne fighter / dive bomber & pretty lousy at both. The display centres around an aircraft that was found in a lake in Norway. In spite of being slower than the German bombers, the aircraft in question did manage to shoot down an He111, but was then itself shot down by an He111 & landed on a frozen lake, not far from its' victim. As sometimes happens at the extremes, the two crews were forced to co-operate to survive. Spring came, the ice melted, the Skua sank.

The display in the museum shows its'  recovery. A room with the floor area of a house has been given over to the display with the ceiling painted white as if it's the floating ice & a dummy diver attaching floatation bags onto the bits of wreckage, the photo just shows a corner of the room, there's a lot more

If you find the Fairey Fulmar, it's just beyond that, up some stairs under a large sign saying DON'T MISS THE SKUA!

Shortly after that my girlfriend was accosted by an elderly volunteer, who began with "have you been here before? Where have you come from today?" type questions & very quickly realised that my girlfriend was not just along for the ride & bored, but was an proper enthusiast in her own right. He turned out to be an ex test pilot instructor & kept her entertained for some time, while I took pictures of the Centaurus engine & it's mass of exhaust pipes. That's two 2"(ish) pipes from each cylinder, two rows of cylinders & nine cylinders in each row. it's a work of art.

The following day we went to Athelhampton house, which again was very good for a number of reasons, it has some properly old things inside, a chest from the 1400s still with some original paint for example, but the outstanding thing was the attitude of the owner. It's very old but is currently heated by 15 ground & air source heat pumps & a great many solar panels, all of which are hidden from view. The lady who showed us round ("Kelly" I think) was well into her later years, but as bright a button & sharp as a tack, very witty & entertaining & made it quite clear that things were there to be touched & felt which is so refreshing after being used to the National Trust's "don't touch that dear, it's terribly old". If something's survived from the 1400s with some of it's paint, I'm unlikely to do it much harm without resorting to an axe, Kelly was standing her water bottle on it.

Another wonderful thing was the Priest hole. You often see in a certain type of film, someone lightly touches something, there's a barely audible "click" & part of the panelling swings open to reveal a staircase. I've always thought "yeah right - with middle ages tools?". But Kelly did walk up to the fireplace in one room, she did touch the fire surround lightly in a certain place & a previously invisible part of the panelling did swing open to reveal stairs!

Day three & on to The Tank Museum. What can I tell you? I last visited in the mid '90s & it's got quite a lot bigger, they have 300 tanks - 300! Granted quite a lot are in the restoration centre, which you can see from a balcony, but not get close to, but it's really very impressive, though it's very much an army tank museum, so it's mostly about the use of the tanks rather than the engineering behind the tanks. The first hall starts with the first tank known as "Little Willy" & has examples of all sorts, ending with modern tanks. this one hall took us most of the day to get round, but we did get into the WW2 hall which houses some of the more impressive / specialist / weird stuff.

An Italian tank - racy paint scheme, in fact quite a lot of the weird stuff was Italian, they certainly ploughed their own furrow.

Sd Kfz186 Jagdtiger. It's the size of a house & at 75tonnes, it's the weight of one too. Armour so thick it was invulnerable to any allied gun that wasn't mounted on a battleship, but it's gun could take out any allied tank even if it was a mile away. Trouble was, it was just too heavy for it's engine & transmission to move, so they broke down & were set fire to by their own crews much more often than they were destroyed by the allies. But that's probably a good thing.

There were also floating tanks (duplex drive Sherman) bridge laying tanks, flail tanks flame-throwing tanks & even a tiny "tankette" (yes - really).

We liked The Tank Museum & there was a fair bit we didn't get around to, but as our tickets last for a year, we will be returning.