Covert Run to Bletchley Park
SKCC mounts a dawn raid to Bletchley Park – Ssshhhhhhh
Organiser Report by Neil….
I was really looking forward to today having spent a bit of time sorting things out for it. Just a heads up to any would be event or run organiser it really isn’t that difficult so don’t be put off by the thought of it.
Right, back to the day. An early start for most people to get the timings right. The hardest part of the day was getting No1 son out of bed at 5am to get round the M25 and up the 414 to Hemel Hempstead to the Rallye point where the east meets the west to start the run proper.
Just a word of thanks to David T at this point for organising the west side posse and herd them to HH. Thank you sir.
Given the nature of the day was code breaking I decided to create a little (see; easy to do as a solo driver) cryptic quiz for the combined run to breakfast at Leighton Buzzard. Only four questions, all related to the names of villages we passed though. The prize for, what some would call thinking outside the box, while other would call cheating, goes to Tenpin-Stuart who wrote down the name of EVERY village we passed through and tried to blag the result 
Shocking behaviour 
No real prize for the outcome just a bit of fun to add another dimension to the day.
Thanks to Cookies Restaurant (cafe) for opening two hours early on a Sunday morning to accommodate 16 hungry nosed SKCC’ers. Food was good I thought and although limited to standard cooked breakfasts I thought they coped remarkably well given the size of the place.
Once suitably fed and watered off we set to Bletchley Park, but before I cover that I just thought we should cover an overview of the route, the scenery was very pretty bathed in sunshine and although a couple of roads had “calming” measures (why they call them Traffic calming I’ll never know as its bl00dy annoying if you ask me) they ALL had tarmac, which was a bonus! I thought the route was tickity boo overall (funnily enough). Given there was some blatting done to get to the HH Rallye point in the first place all was good.
So to Bletchley Park itself, if you haven’t been there I would suggest you put it on your things to do list as it’s worth a visit and make sure you get the guided tour. It really is fascinating to see how it all worked, which is more than the people who worked there ever did. We were lucky enough (nay honoured) today to share our visit with the annual reunion of the “employees” who worked there during the war.
Lots to see including live demo’s of the machines and more to see then you can do in a day as it takes you from the wet German in the field sending an encrypted message to the fully analysed and dispatched message out of Bletchley to the ULTRA security cleared need to know, sometimes read by our “play makers” before it got to the intended recipient.
As has previously been said the weather that had given us such a treat on the way up was turning so many of us headed for home to try and miss the worst of it but it sounds like we all got a soaking somewhere enroute. Not to worry it certainly didn’t put the dampers on the day.