Royal Engineers Museum

Today we piled into the health hazard that our car has become and barrelled up the A2 to the simply splendid Royal Engineers Museum.

An amazing place to learn

What better place to learn about the people who have defended and protected our country since the 1700s than by hearing about it directly from the people themselves?

As we wandered through the exhibition, travelling through time from the inception of the 'Sappers' in the late 1700s all the way through the two World Wars to end up at modern warfare (next to the reasonably priced cafe I might add), the true enormety and scale of the operations that we often don't hear about in the public domain came to life, and along the way we learned all about:

• How tracked vehicles worked
• Why they needed tracks
• Why we can't put tracks on the family car
• Why a tank would possibly need to carry a bridge
• Why tanks have periscopes
• Whether tanks are waterproof
• Why we can't buy a tank
• Why a larger cannonball causes more damage
• Why an exploding shell causes even more damage
• Why we can't have exploding shells in our living room
• How the V2 rocket managed to guide itself through the air without a pilot
• How the Harrier Jump Jet could take off vertically
• How long our three year old will ignore increasingly powerful neuronal signals from her bladder
• Just how much Daddy is willing to spend in the cafe to make everyone be quiet

It's really good. We'd highly recommend it.