Monday 27 August, Day 6, IWM Duxford and some thoughts about Cambridge

We're still in Cambridge, but today we went to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.
I think we walked approximately 1000 miles each, but it was well worth the aching feet and sore knees.
We got there on the shuttle bus which is astounding badly advertised.  It's obviously meant to be a money-making venture - it's run by the company that does the local hop-on, hop-off tours - but there were only four passengers on the way out there, and only the two of us on the way back.  More on this later, but for now, some of the best sights at the IWM.

Concorde - I'm so sad that I'll never get a chance to fly in it, but at least I got to step on-board one:

Nose to nose with a B52 bomber:

1940 Operations Room, still set up as it was then:

Messerschmitt Bf 109E

A Pickett-Hamilton Fort, aka Canberra Bus Shelter  :-)

Tiger Moth coming in to land - it's an operating airfield and you can go for flights in a number of old planes:

Paul took LOTS of photos and I expect he'll be posting them separately.


Now, back to Cambridge - I have reached the conclusion that they don't really want tourists here.  It was almost impossible to get details about the shuttle, and what we could find was contradictory.  For example, we caught the 9:22 shuttle to Duxford - quite definitely mentioned as the first shuttle of the day on their website, quite definitely NOT on the list of upcoming departures at the bus stop. There's also this very 'Canberra-like' set of assumptions at work - that you can just mention the name of a place and people will know where it is.  The bus from Milton Keynes the other day came into 'Parker's Pierce' - that's the sum total of the information provided - but Parker's Pierce is a huge open field with streets all around.  Same when we leave tomorrow - no information at all about where the coach leaves from.   The shuttle this morning - left from 'Silver Street' - with no indication of where in the street we needed to be.  The other people who caught the shuttle this morning were waiting at the railway station and no-one in the station could tell them anything about where to wait for the shuttle even though they knew the bus stop number.  As I said, they don't want tourists here. It's a nice place and I don't really regret coming here, but we won't be coming back.