A different slice of History

Today we went to Eden Camp - a museum mostly about WW2 - based at a Prisoner of War camp. It wasn't just about the camp, as it covered the history of the war from the growth of Hitler. It had a lot of personal histories and some reconstructions of scenes like an ordinary street which had just been bombed. The result was a real impression of what war was like for ordinary British people. TSH and Diva hadn't previously known that soldiers taken prisoner in Europe and North Africa were brought back to camps such as this and often worked on local farms. Sometimes they were sent to work on farms in USA, before returning. The exhibit claimed that only one German POW ever escaped and made it back home but this seems very unlikely. This is a very different and very special museum.

Exhibits of personal interest concerned the 'ack-ack' girls - female gunners who were part of the teams which   looked for enemy aircraft approaching British shores and attempted to shoot them down. TSH's mother - still fettling well at 93 - was such a Gunner. He also pointed out that nowhere in the museum was anything like the letter from Montgomery which was sent to his father to thank him for his service.Sometimes I think the people visiting these museums know as much as the curators about their subjects.

The next visit was to Scampston, the main part of which is a beautiful modern garden designed by Piet Oudolf, a leading designer who pioneered 'prairie planting'. This was an excellent peaceful end to the afternoon - and the Yorkshire ham in the restaurant was pretty good.   Here is a picture of a dandelion seed which TSH took:

A sobering thought - each of the diversions we had on Sunday was because of the death of a biker in a road accident.