A bird that breathes fire and spits out death and destruction
Over the bank holiday weekend, we headed off on Sunday to visit the Battle of Britain Bunker. Because it is, like, practically on my doorstep. Having kept the Bunker completely secret all through WWII, while it was the home of Fighter Command 11 Group, they seem to have lost the knack of telling people where it is. However! During weekends this summer, you can just rock up and look round it without making an appointment (details here).
I'd been expecting some sort of a disused and slightly dank underground bunker. But no! It's an exciting rabbit warren of a place, with things like the Plotting Room set up exactly as it was at 11:30am on September 15th, 1940. The Plotting Room is not, disappointingly, the place where they plotted sedition and the downfall of the Nazis, but the room with the Big Map on which people pushed about little wooden blocks so the officer up above could get the big picture of which squadrons were where.
The whole of one wall of the plotting room is taken up with a giant display of coloured lights, all indicating exactly what any of the 11 Group squadrons were up to. There are also indicators showing the height of the barrage balloons - which are, in fact painted scales on the walls with small barrage-balloon-shaped cut-outs stuck on. It's a bizarre combination of official-looking electronics and endearingly home-made bits. And a sobering thought that the entire operation (and the large number of people who staffed it) could probably be replaced with a fairly low-end PC and a decent monitor.
There are also lots of rooms of WWII memorabilia, and rooms dedicated to the WAAFs, to Bomber Command, to the now-closed RAF Uxbridge... we went expecting to have a quick look round and head off, and ended up being booted out half an hour after closing time when they turned the lights off.
If you're in the area on a summer Saturday, and can cope with a moderate flight of stairs to get into the bunker, I highly recommend a trip. It's free, though they ask for a donation of £3. You won't see any planes, but it's a fascinating bit of history.
(OK, there are two planes mounted on display stands outside - a Spitfire and a Hurricane - but they don't go anywhere. And parts of their anatomy, especially the landing gear, have been restored entirely for appearance.)
Afterwards, we trundled on to a local park. If you've driven down the A40 to London since about 2008, you'll have seen Northala Fields - the four large tummocky humps they built out of the rubbish from demolishing the old Wembley Stadium. Driving past it, I've noticed that it's a well-used park, there are often people running up, standing on, or rolling down the humps.
I thought the four mounds was all their was to the park, but it turns out to be huge, clean, well-kept, and (on a sunny bank-holiday Sunday) positively jammed with people running about, learning to ride bikes, eating picnics, fishing in the small ponds, buying ice cream, strolling, sitting on benches, admiring the view or exercising dogs. The humps screen the noise from the A40, and it's a remarkably lovely park.
And a cup of tea from the teeny tiny café is only a quid. Decent tea, too, and nice brioche-y sort of cake. Though ChrisC's Cornetto seemed to have been the victim of a thawing-and-refreezing incident and had gone a bit weird.
We walked through into a different, adjacent park which had sports fields, and basketball courts, and a small skate park, and a cricket match going on (with people in white and everything) and cycle routes and several outbreaks of kids' play areas. And a very small patch of woodland, which seemed to be full of two boys having exactly the sort of borderline-inadvisable fun everyone should have in woods, near watercourses, when in their early teens.
It's an area I've never been in before, and I'm actually really impressed by it.
I'd been expecting some sort of a disused and slightly dank underground bunker. But no! It's an exciting rabbit warren of a place, with things like the Plotting Room set up exactly as it was at 11:30am on September 15th, 1940. The Plotting Room is not, disappointingly, the place where they plotted sedition and the downfall of the Nazis, but the room with the Big Map on which people pushed about little wooden blocks so the officer up above could get the big picture of which squadrons were where.
The whole of one wall of the plotting room is taken up with a giant display of coloured lights, all indicating exactly what any of the 11 Group squadrons were up to. There are also indicators showing the height of the barrage balloons - which are, in fact painted scales on the walls with small barrage-balloon-shaped cut-outs stuck on. It's a bizarre combination of official-looking electronics and endearingly home-made bits. And a sobering thought that the entire operation (and the large number of people who staffed it) could probably be replaced with a fairly low-end PC and a decent monitor.
There are also lots of rooms of WWII memorabilia, and rooms dedicated to the WAAFs, to Bomber Command, to the now-closed RAF Uxbridge... we went expecting to have a quick look round and head off, and ended up being booted out half an hour after closing time when they turned the lights off.
If you're in the area on a summer Saturday, and can cope with a moderate flight of stairs to get into the bunker, I highly recommend a trip. It's free, though they ask for a donation of £3. You won't see any planes, but it's a fascinating bit of history.
(OK, there are two planes mounted on display stands outside - a Spitfire and a Hurricane - but they don't go anywhere. And parts of their anatomy, especially the landing gear, have been restored entirely for appearance.)
Afterwards, we trundled on to a local park. If you've driven down the A40 to London since about 2008, you'll have seen Northala Fields - the four large tummocky humps they built out of the rubbish from demolishing the old Wembley Stadium. Driving past it, I've noticed that it's a well-used park, there are often people running up, standing on, or rolling down the humps.
I thought the four mounds was all their was to the park, but it turns out to be huge, clean, well-kept, and (on a sunny bank-holiday Sunday) positively jammed with people running about, learning to ride bikes, eating picnics, fishing in the small ponds, buying ice cream, strolling, sitting on benches, admiring the view or exercising dogs. The humps screen the noise from the A40, and it's a remarkably lovely park.
And a cup of tea from the teeny tiny café is only a quid. Decent tea, too, and nice brioche-y sort of cake. Though ChrisC's Cornetto seemed to have been the victim of a thawing-and-refreezing incident and had gone a bit weird.
We walked through into a different, adjacent park which had sports fields, and basketball courts, and a small skate park, and a cricket match going on (with people in white and everything) and cycle routes and several outbreaks of kids' play areas. And a very small patch of woodland, which seemed to be full of two boys having exactly the sort of borderline-inadvisable fun everyone should have in woods, near watercourses, when in their early teens.
It's an area I've never been in before, and I'm actually really impressed by it.