Visit to Brooklands Museum February 2016

This week we visited the Brooklands Museum at Weybridge. The parked aircraft are visible from the trainline into London so it was about time I visited this historic site. It was the world’s first purpose built motor circuit way back in 1907.

There are parts of the original banking still there and I can testify that it is very steep close to the top.

Brooklands-banking — The banking on the Brooklands circuit.

The exhibition of cars

In the sheds just after entrance are examples of historic cars and racing cars as well as a simulator to enable a drive around the circuit in a McLaren F1 car. Doing 217 mph around the banking was all too realistic especially on my first attempt I missed the left kink on the straight and crashed into the barriers. Here are some of the cars and racing cars that we looked at.

The Wellington recovered from Loch Ness

I had never seen a Wellington bomber in real-life and in the hanger at the museum volunteers are restoring an example that crashed into Loch Ness in 1940.

At the rear of the Wellington is a mock-up of the cabin to show just how cramped it was inside for the crew.

Concorde Delta Golf

The star (for me) of the museum is Concorde Delta Golf. There is a small charge for going on an organised tour of her. She was the production prototype and flew around the world demonstrating Concorde’s abilities. She entered service with BA and eventually became the spare parts supply for the rest of the fleet.

Volunteers at the museum have put her back together and added examples of the seating used by BA as well as a great audi visual presentation that simulates Delta Golf taking off from Heathrow – noise and shakes included.

You enter Delta Golf at the rear through the door used to load passenger’s baggage and walk through to the front of the cabin to sit and watch the audio visual presentation.