I would like to 2nd Crazychicks cardiff/wales info. The castle museum would be great, along with the National museum of Wales too which has interesting art and loads of military stuff especially roman artifacts.

Abergavenny is a lovely town with WW2 History as Rudolf Hess was held here before his trial. Its worth researching and finding out about this lovely market town, there are some good pubs and a great place to visit, it has a rail station so probably easy to reach.

Muck

Mucky & Crazychick, Thanks on the information on Cardiff and Abergavenny. Did Cardiff on my first solo trip back a few years as well as Caerphilly. For this trip I started out with Abergavenny as my first place to visit, but over time I somehow replaced it with Cambridge. I will now see about re-doing it.

Dover - you can climb the path up to the top of the Cliffs of Dover and on top there are a series of WWII war bunkers to explore

bring torch

i did this several years ago so don't know if the bunkers and tunnels are still accessible but if so for a military buff and i am not it's reliving the life of a poor gunner fighting the Invasion of England

great views across the Channel of course as well

If you’re in London and are looking for something military that you won’t have seen before can I recommend the Firepower museum at the Woolwich Arsenal? It’s only a short walk from Woolwich Arsenal station and is the museum of the Royal Artillery.

The Arsenal itself is quite impressive in itself too.

Don’t hang around after dark though.

&quot;<i>i did this several years ago so don't know if the bunkers and tunnels are still accessible</i>&quot;

The WWII casemate, tunnels and bunkers have been open to the general public for several years now. They are part one of the admission price to Dover Castle.

In fact, English Heritage calls the site &quot;Dover Castle and the Secret Wartime Tunnels&quot;

If you do stick to Cambridge, how about the Scott Polar Research Institute, if you haven't already seen it?

Not precisely military, but it has exhibits on the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. (Haven't actually been there, but it's on my list.)

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/

I find things like lists compiled for &quot;Best days out&quot; by Time Out and the major UK papers to be helpful in introducing new ideas. Many are available online, for free. The Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times have particularly good Features sites.

Googling selections of words of interest helps flush out new leads, too. Just because something isn't talked to death on this site doesn't mean it isn't worth seeing. But you sound like you know that already!

Lees is home to the National Armoury museum.

In another thread on runnymede in suburban London near Windsor it was noted that there is an Allied Air Force Memorial in the ancient meadow where the Big Carta was signed - 20,000+ names inscribed on walls.

Just to avoid confusion; the Air Force memorial (to commonwealth air crews) isn't actually in Runnymeade but on top of a nearby hill.

From there yopu can walk down the Long Walk (very accurately named!) to Windsor Castle and the train station.

My DH and I had a great day (and could have spent much more time) at the Royal Armory in Leeds. At the time, there was a Samurai Armor exhibit, but that was 2 years ago - I'm sure they're concentrating on something else at the moment

CW

how far is the Memorial from the water meadow

you sound like it's in Windsor Great Park - right?

though i was at the Runnymede meadow i don't recall seeing the Air Forces Museum on the way

please clarify - thanks

There's a map on the last page of this:

http://www.cwgc.org/admin/files/cwgc_runnymede.pdf

It's about a 20 minute walk.

There is no museum. just the memorial. Which is again a short walk to the (far end of) Windsor Great Park - you have to walk all the way from Copper Knob (stop sniggering). and that quite a long way indeed (I'd guess a couple of miles).

You could go to Keswick
and visit the Cumberland Pencil Museum
http://www.pencilmuseum.co.uk/

Take the train to Penrith and then get the bus