Bovington - 18th June

Today was a day for the boys! Actually I don't know that Nicholas was really interested, but Adam is very interested in tanks, and so today we drove over to the Bovington Tank Museum.

It is stuffed full of tanks. Room after room after room of parked tanks. Tanks they built, and tanks they captured from other people. There are six sections to the museum, and they had children's activity sheets for each section. The first section we went through told the story of the tank from concept to prototype to something that actually worked. Ellie was determined to answer everything, and it took us probably an hour to get through just the first section. She would not move on until she had answered every. single. question.

The second section was a mock up of the WW1 trenches. She had her kid's guide, but I rushed her through it, and she was quite cross with me! By the third section I wouldn't even let her have it. I didn't fancy spending six hours at the tank museum! There was a lot of information about the role of tanks in the D-day landings, and Adam asked me what that was all about. I'm pretty sure I knew all about that when I was 11! I was a little surprised that he didn't.... so that was their history lesson for today!


However, later on we went inside the oldest working tank in the world, a Mark IV that went into battle in 1916. The guide was asking the kids questions like what makes a tank male or female? (the position/number of guns) and why would a tank have pigeons? (for messages on the battlefield) and Ellie knew all the answers. So I suppose that kid's guide was worth the time!

Here is Adam inside the Mark IV. We learned that it would have been pitch black inside, with a minimum temperature of 150f. Raw chicken just placed inside the tanks cooks in a couple of hours. The soldiers had to keep eating dry bread because all the exhaust fumes came back inside the tank, and the dry bread absorbed some of the toxins in their bodies from the exhaust fumes. It sounded absolutely horrific. Things improved though... Great Grandad Alf was in Centurion tanks in the Korean war, and Grandad told us that his Dad thought it was a great tank, because it had an electric kettle inside and you could have a cup of tea whenever you wanted!

At the end of the day, just as we were leaving, the Marines were practicing assault landings in the arena just outside. So we stayed to watch them jump out of their helicopter, which was quite a show. It generated an enormous amount of noise and dust!