On Friday 11th of September, Year 9 went on an educational trip to Bletchley Park. On the coach journey up, we all watched The Imitation Game, which got us all in the mood for doing some codebreaking, as well as helping us to understand a bit more how the site was used during WW2.

When we first arrived, we split into groups and had a chance to wander around the mansion and grounds on our own. Inside the mansion there was a great exhibition of The Imitation Game, and we got to go into some of the rooms that they filmed scenes from the movie in! We then got a tour of the grounds, which gave us much more detail about the uses of the sight. We learnt how the Polish actually broke the enigma code before the British, but kept it a secret. We also found out that Alan Turing buried all of his valuables underground to keep them safe during the war, and protected the spots he had buried them at with a code. However, when the war was over, he had forgotten how to decode this particular code, and therefore never found his money!

Finally, we had a codes and cyphers workshop, where we learnt about common codes used during the war, as well as how to decode them. We also had a chance to use a real enigma machine, which would have been used during the war. We managed to write Jessica’s name in code, and decode it again using the machine.

We had a wonderful day where we learnt lots of new fun and interesting facts, and it was well worth waking up at 6am for!

Florence Haggis, 9S