Bressingham

As part of our visit to Mildenhall we made a day visit to Bressingham Steam Museum on 19th May 2013. We were particularly lucky in that this was a special day at the museum to celebrate the Dad's Army TV series. Although sadly many of the stars of this series have died there were some survivors at this event. They were joined by stars of 'It ain't half hot mum' and 'Hi Di Hi'. 

Bressingham is not only a steam museum but has some huge impressive gardens. There are two types of entry fee, one just allows entry to the museum and gardens and the other gives you rides on the three different rail lines and the gallopers. We went for the full ticket and both enjoyed the rides.

Our first port of call was the engine sheds where we saw some huge engines, both rail and traction type engines.

I have very little knowledge of railways but couldn't help but be impressed by the scale of these huge machines. Seeing them on railway lines is often from station platforms where you don't really see the full height of the rolling stock.

This beautifully restored signal box is open to the public and the levers used to change the signals and points can be examined close up.

The ticket we had gave us three rides on the gallopers and we certainly made full use of these with Julie particularly enjoying the fast rides.

Going along with the Dad's Army theme there lots of vehicles (particularly military ones) and displays from the second World War era.

As mentioned earlier there are three railway lines to ride on. Two of the tracks go well out into the countryside and we say a great variety of wildlife including some deer (didn't get a picture though). The third line goes around the gardens. This line features the turntable shown in the bottom picture. The turntable must be well balanced as the engine was turned with very little effort. All the steam engines looked fantastic.

It ain't half Hots 'La-dee-da' Gunner 'Paderewski' Jonathan Graham was played by John Clegg and he was in fine form telling a number of anecdotes to the enthusiastic crowd. 

From Hi Di Hi we had the Web Twins and Jeffery Holland (who played spike ), no picture of Jeffery though.

The Reverend Timothy Farthing  played by Frank Williams was the vicar of St. Aldhelm's Church in Dad's Army, Fans of the series will remember that he shared his church hall and office with Mainwaring's platoon.

We spoke to Bill Pertwee who played ARP Warden William Hodges in Dad's Army and were terribly saddened to learn of his death only days later.

I don't have enough space here to get any where near to doing justice to the extensive gardens at Bressingham but here is one example of the lovely views. The gardens are split into various themed areas and cover such a large area you could easily spend more than half a day wandering round the gardens alone.

Would we recommend a visit to Bressingham, without doubt we would. There are things to see and do for all ages and we hope to go back again before too long.