On the weekend of 24 to 26 October John and I had a weekend away in Swanage. We were lucky with the weather which was warm and dry and we had a fun time. We had decided that we would stop at the tank museum on the way. The museum houses over 300 tanks from 28 nations. The world's first tank, Little Willie, is on display and the exhibition goes through to the current main battle tank of the British Army Challenger 2. There are 8 exhibitions to visit at the museum, we only visited the first one, the tank story 1915 to present day. There was so much to see! I had been asked by younger daughter and a couple of colleagues from work to take loads of photos which I did. I'm not going to show you all of them but I thought you may be interested to see a few. If not you can always scroll quickly down to our visit to Arne nature reserve.
Little Willie was the prototype of the first tank and it never saw service but the mark 1 did. Below is the Mark 2 tank. The side is cut away to show the limited space for the crew inside
This one is the Lanchester mark 2 armoured car
The early tanks were slow with many covering only 5 miles in an hour. This next one is the German Panzer 2. This was so small against the modern tanks. I got a little fascinated with the tracks as these had presented problems for the designers. The tracks help to spread the weight of the tank stopping it sinking into soft or wet earth as it would if it had ordinary wheels.
The German Tiger tank
and the Panther. Hitler ordered that the Russian T34 tank be copied and manufactured and so the Panther came into being. It was better made than the Russian tank but production was very slow and so there was never enough of them to make a difference to the fighting in the Soviet Union, Italy or North West Europe.
The Sherman Firefly was a British tank based on the American Sherman tank. It was fitted with a more powerful British 17 pounder gun.
and this photo is of the American Patten tank. This tank made me feel quite small. This became the main battle tank of America and it was used in Vietnam. One of the male visitors was American and he was excited to get his wife to take a photo of him by the tank
The final photo is of a UN armoured car. It really looked minute among all the large tanks.
I found the tanks fascinating and horrifying by turns. Fascinating because of their design and the fact that the crew fit into limited space sharing it with the ammunition. Horrifying due to the amount of damage and destruction they can cause.
When we got to our hotel in Swanage we took a walk to the town square along the sea front. It was windy but warm. After dinner we chatted and read in our room enjoying some delicious red wine before we settled to sleep. It had been a good day.
After breakfast on Saturday we headed out to the nature reserve at Arne. We had visited once before and this time we wanted follow a different trail. The leaves on the trees were changing to yellow and orange and there was still some heather in bloom.
The first part of the trail took us up hill and gave us a good view across country.
We then followed the path down towards the shore. Along the way we spent time watching various birds, little egrets, curlew, whimbrel and cormorants. Once at the beach we followed the shoreline round to Poole harbour. The tide was on its way out.
I loved the play of the light on the water and so I took some photos.
This one looks like I took the photo at night.
The sea was so clear.
As we walked further along the shore we saw these little red flowers.
The cliff along here was liable to fall so we kept away. This site was good for seeing sand lizards but on this occasion we didn't see any.
Over the day we saw over 30 species of bird. A good day bird watching. In the evening we had fish and chips and sat on the beach to enjoy them,
After breakfast on Sunday we took a walk to the town and enjoyed our walk back to the car. Several people were enjoying a swim in the sea. I haven't swam in the sea for several years. We travelled back home enjoying the country that we passed.
We enjoyed our weekend away. Our next trip is in December.
Take care
Lyndsey
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