I make mistakes while I travel, but I hardly make the same mistake twice – so this time, I showed up a few minutes before opening at the Brooklands museum and planned to stay all the way until closing. I have been there before, so now I didn’t have the urge to check out everything (which would have been impossible anyway), only the parts that I missed last time and my favorites, of course. Turns out these can fill out a day and I would gladly spend another day there or visit one of their events. I guess Brooklands is there in my favorites along the Silverstone Museum.
A tiny bit of revision about what Brooklands is and why it is so close to my heart: IT IS THE CRADLE OF MOTORSPORT!!! Sorry for yelling, I got enthusiastic, but don’t blame me, you’ll understand in a minute. The Brooklands racetrack has been the first EVER racetrack built in the whole world with the purpose of having races on it, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, you name it! Unfortunately not much has remained from the original track – though there are some lovely bankings – some parts are just missing and the remains are in a condition similar to the Monza bankings.
But this is not all! It also housed aircraft factories, if you have heard of the Wellington bombers, those are from here, and Brooklands is considered the home of Concord (or at least one of his homes). And there is even more: there is a stratosphere chamber, which is a genius invention to test aircraft on the ground but in different stratospheric conditions. I hope you understand my previous yelling now!
Upon arrival, I headed straight to the Grand Prix exhibition, because obviously that is one of my favorites. What you have to know is that the museum itself is a huge piece of land with different buildings housing different exhibitions and they also have an aircraft fleet, so prepare for the weather conditions! Anyway, I went through the Grand Prix cars and I skipped the simulator because I was awful at it last time, but there was a Senna car that kids were allowed to sit in.
I was told that I am too tall to squeeze in, so I left in despair, but I also googled how tall Senna was: 2 cms taller than me!!! So I knew that I would confront the people later about this – which I did, and I don’t think adults are supposed to sit in there (but let’s face it, I am smaller and lighter than a lot of kids), but I did force myself in. Was it comfortable? Not at all. Was I happy to do it? Immensely, so that is a win in my book.
Afterwards, I walked around a bit, visited the McLaren exhibition – I was very appropriately wearing my McLaren beanie, so I felt right at home. But then came the Concorde experience that I couldn’t experience last time as it was under construction. Once again, I felt the urge to switch careers and learn to be an aerodynamicist because it is so marvelous to use the different aero forces to make a plane go twice the speed of sound! I think I have already said that airplanes would probably be my obsession if motorsport and cars wouldn’t already take up most of my time.
It was a 35 minute thing, where a guide told us about its history and its mechanics, then we stepped inside to see some memorabilia and videos. Finally, we could enjoy a “flight” on the Concorde and we all left with a certificate showing that we did indeed take a flight with the Concorde. I enjoyed the tour, but my favorite part was learning about this engineering miracle – but my curiosity was not satisfied so I also had some talks with ChatGPT afterwards (ask him about the sonic boom it is exciting!!).
I was getting really cold (and needed time for my further research), so I ate my sandwich at the clubhouse and ordered an oat milk latte. Last time, the club house wasn’t open either, but it has such a nice atmosphere and they make damn good coffees, so I enjoyed a nice half an hour there before heading out to the remains of the track (it is my favorite part, always makes me tear up a little bit) and to the bridge above it. It was muddy, but I saw a random McLaren 720S (no, I didn’t recognize it, it was written on the car) in the wild, which made the little walk even more worth it.
Finally, I climbed all the airplanes, because last time, I only had time to check out one – but that was one of the most interesting part of that trip, talking with a volunteer explaining me some aero aspects of the plane (I think you can see the pattern here), and this time I also had some nice chats with the volunteers.
After this, it was basically closing time, but I left after a day well-spent. I am sure this was NOT my last visit, especially that they have a lot of cool events as well. Brooklands is in Weybridge, just a tiny bit outside of London, and accessible by car or train – either way, make sure to check their website for the correct zipcode to put in your navigation, otherwise it makes you take a huge detour. Other advice: give it a whole day to explore!
Leave a Reply