Bedfordshire + Area
This past weekend has been spent with James in Leighton Buzzard. It is a cute little town (40 000 people) which is just north of London. He’s been kind enough to spend some time with me driving around the country lanes and visiting the towns and sites of the area.
Yesterday we happened to pass through Woburn during their annual garden day, where owners of lovely gardens open them up to visitors. It was fun seeing the variety of yards – everything from extremely trim and well kept, to ones left to grow more loosely. I, of course, loved all the flowers and took loads of photos.
Today we went and visited Bletchley Park, which was the base for codebreaking during WWII. We learned about the history, the code machine Enigma that the German’s used, and the processes the English used to crack them including the Bombe. They recruited very intelligent young university grads in the math faculties to work out the codes, and at their peak had about 10 000 people there. Their success in codebreaking led to the shortening of the war by about 2 years.
The wind today was ridiculous! I’m not sure what the max was, but the current speed is 30 miles/hr. It was incredibly sunny and beautiful out so we went to the top of a hill to get some pictures, and were feeling very blown over. We tried to capture the intensity of the wind in photo, but it just wasn’t possible. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such strong wind and it was quite disorienting with all the air rushing past, and needing to walk at an angle in order to not fall over.
