Brooklands Museum

Youngest  sister is usually very generous with her birthday presents so this year for her own birthday, mrs maytrees and I took her out for an away day to the Brooklands museum, which is situate on the former motor racing car track near to Cobham Surrey.

Interesting to learn that motor racing  ceased there perhaps largely because of the outbreak of WWII. Equally interesting is the fact that although with great publicity, the first   racing car  race there  in, was it 1926,  was the first UK grand prix, was  won by the French cars which came first, second and third.

A great day out though, which we enjoyed as much as youngest sister. Not only are there many interesting old planes cars and racing cars to be seen and tried, but also an old bus museum along with almost the last surviving Concorde supersonic passenger plane:

Only a few people were able to visit the plane. As we all visited  Brooklands, during the term time  on a Thursday, the place was almost deserted. A visit inside the Concorde there, was interesting as was the mock flight at   60,000' and at over twice the speed of sound. More enjoyable for me though, was trying the racing car and simulator which I doubt would have been possible on a week end or busy day during school holidays. I managed a couple of circuits under the care of an expert, in 44 seconds or thereabouts, which was the second best run of the day. Extracting oneself from the car's narrow and shallow driving seat was for me more difficult than the actual driving.

There were several  other planes one of which I boarded, along with some ancient cars, fire engines, an ambulance and buses. Amusingly one of the latter was a very old  bus  predating the  London Transport Routemasters and which showed Raynes Park as its destination. Bus number 118  TfL still runs though no longer to Raynes Park.

Some pics:

The site worked flat out during the war  in producing fighter aircraft for which it became famous. Indeed, apparently quite a number of Hurricane fighters were being produced before WWII, so that some air defences  for the UK at least were in place when war did indeed break out in 1939.