London and Bletchley Park.
Hot weather here, although it was a little cooler and windy this morning, and rained a little, but soon became hot again, but not terribly so.
Hilary’s friend Lydia picked three of us up and we drove to Bletchley Park, about 50 miles from Barnet, for a lovely day. Bletchley Park is the now famous compound where the British broke the unbreakable (so the Nazis believed) Enigma code during WW2, and as a result had a major advantage over the Nazis from that time on as they were able to read coded German war plans and communications, unknown to the Nazis or the world-at-large until after the war. A truly amazing story. Bletchley Park is now a museum spread out across its buildings and grounds.
The Polish were very instrumental in their important foundational work in breaking the Enigma code, and pioneered the work, which was further developed by British mathematicians, engineers and scientists, like Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, until the code was fully cracked.
As we’re coming up to the commemoration of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and given the importance of the Polish pioneers in code breaking, the Park had Polish food trucks, singing, dancing, and lectures about Polish mathematicians who made the early breakthroughs that led to the eventual development of the Enigma decoding machines. Those commemorations added to what was a lovely day.
We enjoyed an excellent day out, I very much enjoyed meeting Lydia and hope I’ll get a chance to see her again before I head back home.
Once home, we relaxed, and I enjoyed Claudio’s meal preparation, just for himself. As he said, he doesn’t just enjoy eating, he enjoys the experience.
Hung out, talked, watched a documentary on the codebreakers, some more interesting TV, and bed.