At the very start of the trip, we split up into groups. Our group had a tour first and the guide took us around the park and showed us some of the main sites: the huts, the garages and the mansion. A lot of us did not know much about Bletchley Park before we went but we learnt all about why it was so important during World War Two. The tour guide explained how codebreakers were based at Bletchley Park during the war to try and intercept communications. He told us to imagine being someone that was asked to decode messages and we had to imagine the pressure that these inexperienced codebreakers were under. If they didn’t decode messages quickly enough, then communications were missed and this could be fatal for our troops.

As well as the tour, we had an amazing workshop. We were shown Morse code and we had to listen to messages in Morse code and try to work out what the messages said. It was so hard as the messages came through so quickly. How did the codebreakers keep up with all the messages? It must have been incredibly difficult for the codebreakers at the time. During the workshop, the Bletchley Park staff also let us touch a key on an Enigma machine, which is worth around £500,000.

After the workshop, we had lunch and then it was time for us to explore the park in smaller groups. We went to the mansion and saw the billiard room, the library (filled with so many books) and ballroom. We then went into the huts, where up to 200 workers would have worked during the war. In one of the buildings, we got to see the Bombe, which was used to decode the secret messages. We got to see a short film and this described what happened during World War Two and how Bletchley Park was used.

It was an interesting day and our favourite parts were the workshop, seeing the mansion, getting close to the old vehicles in the garages and touching machines that were actually used during the war.  Have a look at some photos from our day HERE

By Oli, Joseph, Chante and Frankie