United managed to get me there 3 hours late, so I was late for my private appointement and tour of Mclaren Technology Centre in Woking, but thankfully they were half shutdown (August holidays), so while I had a slightly more limited tour (factory floor was closed), my host Jeff nicely waited for me and gave me a nice private tour (read more about it here:

After a way overpriced cab to Woking so that I wouldn't be more late than necessary, I took a train to London:

After checking in my hotel, I went to meet my schoolmate Jerome Abela for a nice dinner at Orrery. Yummy french food with seared foie gras :)

For day #2, my plan was to go to London's RAF Museum, which is somewhat outside of London:

On my way back, I had enough time to go see a few others museums. I started with the British Libary which had its room of treasures closed last time I went:

Next, I went to the London Transport Museum which was actually a good visit outside of them having limitations on number of people who can visit:

I then had enough time for a couple of nice crepes (my first meal of the day), before going to see a musical (back to the future) after walking around a bit to burn time until the show:

the show was pretty good, I enjoyed it

Day #3, I had to take my post arrival covid test, which seemed very pointless as it took 7 days from arrival to get the results, but it was required for my trip to the UK:

I then took a train to [Betchley park and the National Museum of Computing, which took the entire day, they were fantastic (click me)|perso/sciencemuseums/post_2021-08-25_Bletchley-Park-_-National-Museum-of-Computing.html]

By the time I was done (full day), got a train back to London to spend the rest of the evening:

One cool thing about public transport in London is that you can now just tap your android phone and get in and out without a ticket.

I went to se Mary Poppins that night. The not so great thing was that on one was wearing a mask. Unsurprisingly London got a lot more covid after that:

Harry Potter wasn't ready yet

it was a pretty good show

anyone who knows above and beyond acoustic, knows why I took this picture :)

Day #4, I had some time in the morning to go see Mme Tussauds (much better than I expected) before taking a train to Warrington where I was going for Creamfields.

All in all, it was not an in depth visit of London, but it wasn't meant to be either. Very happy that I got to see the RAF Museum, the British Library, and Betchley Park. Those alone were worth the trip, glad I got to see them.

During my last visit, I got to see the airplane section of the science museum in london, and that was quite good already. This was obviously bigger though; a very decent collection which is easily worth 4H at least:

the harrier engines were amazing

that was a close parking job :)

it is a beautiful plane, reminds me of the US B1 bombers a bit

really cool twin boom

the British invented a lot of things, including ejection seats, including 0/0 rocket powered ones

these missiles had rotating gears to stabilize them in flight

no elevator needed when you have a full moving tail

rear view mirror

it's been weird to see all those UK planes with what looks like french flags on them

And that was it for the overview, definitely a nice museum worth visiting and easy to access via public transport from London.

After getting my ticket, I looked around the store, and when the exit door happened to get opened, I entered throught the exit so that I'd have enough time to see everything. Kind of sad, but you do what you gotta do.

The museum itself was quite good actually, including showing how the underground was built early on, and used during the war as a bomb shelter:

During the war, the underground tunnels were closed to prevent cross flooding in case of bomb damage:

I feel thankful enough to have been in London in 1995, back when you could hop on a bus while it was running, but it as long ago as this picture:

I didn't quite know that Bletchley Park is actually separate from the National Museum of Computing (they are adjacent, but separated by a fence, needing an annoying 10-15mn walk all the way around), and Bletchey Park actually opens earlier, so it's probably best to visit first (also check the National Museum of Computing's website for which dsays they have guided tours and guides showing the hardware (well worth it).

I'll start with the National Museum of Computing as it was the most exciting to me with its fully functional rebuild bombe and colossus decryption machines for Enigma and Lorenz (the much more secure encryption system German Command used):

One big mistake the germans did was to send a weather report starting with the same german word (known plaintext) every morning. This allowed building a computer (bombe) that tried all rotor combinations to turn the crypted message into the known platintext:

The even more impressive machine (by a lot) was the aptly named "Colossus" which was build from scratch from a reverse engineered design (that part is so impressive), to decrypt the much more secure Lorenz encryption:

the computer reads the encrypted message from this paper tape (5 bit ASCII)

this machine did the decryption once the other machine had output the decryption parameters

How lorenz was reverse engineered and cracked is complicated and super impressive, but basically all came down to the almost same message being sent twice with the same key which allowed for a known plaintext attack:

This video shows the different machines in action Bombe rebuild (to break enigma), Colossus rebuild (to break Lorenz), plus the oldest still working half-mechanical computer (Harwell Dekatron):

And the museum had lot of other computers, a collection that is close to being as good as the one at the computer history museum in Mountain View, CA:

they have a whole collection of tubes (pre-transistors) to replace the ones that break on their machines

core memory

impressive they had so many of those machines, still working

I had one of those

this too

and this too (Asmtrad CPC464+memory upgrade+floppy)

didn't have this one at home, but worked with them at SGI

those I never had, but I wish I did. Archimedes was awesome and way ahead of its time with Arm RISC CPUs

The Harwell Dekatron was also a very cool (and still working) computer I had never seen:

Bletchley Park had different buildings each with their story and what they were used for:

Lots of info on the machines, an earlier crack of older enigma machines was to use EINS for plaintext attacks:

They had many displays on the brilliant mathematicians that broke the codes and built the machines. Alan Turing was one of them, but they were multiple others:

Despite some inefficiencies in having to go back and forth between the 2 museums to join a timed tour at Bletchley (which actually is skipable if you are short on time), I spent the entire day there (open to close) and it was very well worth it.

Foreword and rants

So, I did:

This text below ended up being a lot longer than I though. I have never written anything like this for any event ever, I don't know if creamfields will ever read this, or whether they care, but I feel that others should know so that they can decide whether they went to spend their money there. I'm personally unlikely to ever go back unless I get an apology from them, which I'm obviously not holding my breath, for. I'll be happily proven wrong though, and will update this page if I am.

Back to creamfields, my experience was mixed, and mosty ended up negative due to some of the staff working there (both security and transport staff). I'll therefore start with the list of things that were not great:

they did have people checking the arena entrance, I walked in and out 3 days with my backpack without them being worried once, which was good. If they were really checking, it would have caused monster gridlocks

This is the dangerous outfit they had to save the world from on sunday:

they should have stopped that terrorist during Above and Beyond's set. That said, it is true my backpack was just a bit over the sized allowed, even if it was very far from being the only one, and none of their security people checking the arena entrance minded, they even though it was cool with the fun displays on it

Positive points:

Weird:

Production and stages:

What Creamfields looks like

nice, they were even drug sniffing the DJs and staff

drugs are bad and will send you to jail, buy our alcohol behave stupidly and go to rehab later, it's better

I felt bad for the campers, it was a long ass walk to carry a lot of gear on bad terrain to their campsites:

it's really a long hard walk with heavy luggage

almost there

they even had a store for the campers

It's big, lots of walking and grass which was fortunately dry when I was there. I can't imagine how sucky it must be in the rain and mud:

british humor, maintain 2m distance in a crowded festival

lucky folks got their DJs there, I only got to see Armin there

the hospitality area was nice once you got in

the bar lines were ridiculous, happy I didn't have to use them

Toilets:

basic toilets are literally a toilet seat on top of a box

but who needs toilets, brits will just piss on anything that looks like a wall

but you can't blame them, they had official toilets where you literally pissed on a wall with a gutter underneath that takes most of it to a bucket. I could be easy to get them confused

Night shots:

note that the amusement rides were not free, unlike EDC

Random people:

did that work?

I found another trancejesus

Day #1: Thursday

Finally got in (it was a long walk) and went to see my first trance DJs in the first Rong stage (there were several depending on the day):

as I wrote earlier, there was no sound on thursday, everyone had headphones. It was a bit weird, but worked well enough

M.I.K.E. Push was awesome, on top of his set which I very much enjoyed, he sent James during his set to tell me how much he liked my LED outfit, and give me his drink and meal vouchers. That was fantastic, you rock:

thank you M.I.K.E.

Scott Project

the one issue with headphones was big lines to get in some stages

Lange took over, it had been so long since I last saw Lange

he nicely came down to see us after his set, thanks Lange

Very short video summary, showing the crowd cheering without sound :)

Day #2: Friday

I then went to enjoy the sets. Unfortunately friday was a pepsi max day (where trance was), and the sound was absolutely terrible:

It was great to see Ruben, but hard to enjoy the sound, and the video wall was terrible (downres-ed and then up'res-ed)

Craig was next, again great set but terrible sound

and terrible graphics, I so wanted the 'more than love' video, but no such luck

Sander Van Doorn was last

I went to check out some other stage, which had advanced technology: lasers!

One nice thing is that I got to see scooter, who I remember from 20 years ago and had never seen:

Video summary of Day #2:

Day #3: Saturday

Lots of hard trance on saturday, I guess GB likes it hard :)

GO also played a very hard set, but I still enjoyed it

Brian Kearney played hard as always, not really my thing

Got to see a bit of fatboy slim, that was cool:

Then it was time for Armin, it was a good set. He joked that it was his best set of the year so far (it was also his first, haha):

good thing I had proper cameras and not a cell phone

Right after Armin was above and beyond, the stage they got was pretty sad, it was very hard to even see them most of the time:

one of a few lucky shots

usually it was most like that

the rest of the time, that's all you saw

Two most sets to close the night until 04:00:

Video Summary of Day #3:

Day #4: Sunday

Faithless DJ set was cool

Back at pepsi max, with still terrible sound, but at least it was not physically hurtful and dangerous like 2 days prior

Yeah, Ferry Corsten

lighting and video wall were still bad

other stages were nicer

back to pepsi max for Paul Van Duk

notice the bad anti aliasing and resolution on the video wall

John O Callaghan, love him too

I went to check out Tiesto quickly, but he just played his usual crap, not an ounce of trance. We miss you Tiesto:

sorry, but no, I don't want sushi from Japan

So I finished the night with Pendulum who played some fantastic Drum and Bass, very enjoyable once I found the stage that was in the wrong place on the map:

Video summary of Day #4:

I then hurried my ass out 10mn before the event was over to avoid 2H+ lines to get out. After being physically assaulted by some mall cop outside in the street who didn't like how I was going out to the street (yes, really), I found an uber that had given up on finding his customers and took me instead for a hefty premium (3x the regular price, but that was the price of getting home that night).

So that was it, the 4 days of creamfields were over. It was an interesting experience, but between the ridiculous rules (can't attend thursday without camping), the security on a power trip and more interested in hassling customers than actually keeping the event safe, and the stages I cared about with bad visuals, poor lighting on the DJs, and sometimes bass that was so loud that you couldn't hear the melody anymore and feared for your ears. I also know I'm very lucky that it was sunny and I saw no rain or no mud, I can't imagine how it is with them
I already knew that insomniac does great events in the US, on so many levels, but creamfields made me realize how many things insomniac really gets right. It was interesting to see once (minus the ruined day on sunday thanks to security), but given the minuses of the event, I doubt that I'll go back, there are better events with better execution and respect for the customer and not the problems of getting in and out on a single lane road with only 10 or 20 cabs and a handful of ubers, resulting on multi hour lines to get out, or walking for 1 to 2h back to your place if you don't want to, or can't camp.

And unfortunately, an event is ultimately judged by its best and worst points. In this case, the security folks who effectively said they would not trust me to not leave my LED backpack somwhere random to cause a bomb scare, and as a result, took all my stuff, all the way to making me rip out my LEDs from my pants and shirt, and then literally damaging my equipment while I was gone, you suck and I will not forget this (that said, I also won't forget that you are literally preventing non campers from attending thursday, what madness is this?).
To all the people at creamfields who took pictures with me, gave me smiles, thumbs up and other "this is so cool" (including most of the security staff inside the event), thanks to all of you. You are the reason why I spent over a thousand dollars on this, plus 1.5 years of effort (not counting the 3 years before that on the previous versions as described on https://medium.com/@merlin_69010/how-to-be-a-peacock-engineer-in-the-world-of-edm-with-an-outfit-from-a-few-leds-to-37440-leds-c7d0cf759a49 ).

I didn't care for this picture, but obviously others did

There were cool sections on movies like Alien:

There was another interesting section on Mme Tussauds herself, how she started her career during the french revolution and did actually make copies of famous heads that were decapitated:

The next part was a very interesting ride showing you even more things, I didn't expect that:

And it wasn't over yet, it seems that they've added extensions over time. The last one was on marvel characters:

And also star wars:

All in all, totally exceeded expectations, definitely enjoyed it, especially when it wasn't too busy.

So, there is honestly no reason to go to Warrington, unless you're going to Creamfields, which is what I did (read creamfields report). There is unfortunately no real usable public transport to go to creamfields, and it's a really long walk. I would have gotten a bike, but it was not easy to rent one either (and still a 30mn+ ride).
I ended up relying on uber, which doesn't formally cover the city, but with a bit of luck, you could get a car driving around the area. Cabs were not super timely or reliable either. The biggest issue was getting back from creamfields, the busses were limited, the taxi line was 1h+, and getting an uber on saturday or sunday was really hard.
You're apparently supposed to camp onsite, but given that it's a mud field with occasional torrential rains, and that I had lots of electronics to keep safe and charge overnight, that was a non starter, so I went the uber route and had to get very creative to get back on saturday and sunday
-

So there you go for Warrington. It is neatly located between Liverpool and Manchester, so there is that :)

a little bit of everything

They had decent displays on encryption and Bletchley Park, but I had been to the real place :)

haha

The museum is in a former textile factory, cool to see the equipment still there:

punch tapes that controlled the machines

I'll be honest that Manchester is not a must go destination. I was nearby and had an extra day, so I went to check it out. It had a couple of non essential but decent enough museums, and an ok cathedral :) -

Given that trains were complicated and the Manchester Imperial War Museum North was inconvenient to get to via public transport, so I just took a direct uber there, Manchester is not too far. Because it was a day trip without a car, I had my luggage in tow, which made all museums uneasy, they are so scared about bombs and they don't care about profiling, everyone is a suspect. After looking at my luggage, they agreed to stash it during my visit, The museum was ok:

those small tethered blimbs were put over potential targets to entangle planes that might want to attack

It was a decent enoough museum, after I was done, I took another uber to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (click me). It was only ok given that its biggest hangar with planes was being renovated:

After that, like an idiot who can't plan, I totally spaced on the fact that there was a google office that I forgot to visit, oops, so instead I went to the cathedral before it closed, and caught the next hourly train to Liverpool:

After things were closing up in Manchester, took a direct train to Liverpool, just about 1h away

Science:

Several displays/rooms on animals and insects:

The egypt section was quite good too:

I had already been in liverpool for less than half a day in 2017. but only saw the museum of liverpool and maritime museum, and the 2 cathedrals (then again, not bad for less than half a day). So this time, I went to see the rest :)
-

After getting there the night before, I was setup for the next day.

The next morning, I got up bright and early and went to see Beatles Story first:

I had a quick look at the maritime museum again, although I had mostly seen it last time:

The Tate Liverpool, I had a quick look, but modern art is never really my thing:

Next, I went to visit the Western Approaches WWII Museum, which is a bunch of displays in underground bunkers, not unlike the similar churchill museum in london. Definitely a cool visit:

After that, I went to see the two cathedrals again. Sure, I had seen them, but they're neat, so I went back:

the other more modern cathedral

the nice museums I had been to

darn, the photo was off by a bit :)

From there, I still couldn't get the damn electric scooters working because they required to validate my drivers license, sigh..., so it was a long walk to the world museum, where I spent the rest of the day. As explained in the separate page (click me), the world museum is an everything museum, and it was actually quite good:

And that was it for visiting Liverpool, it definitely has plenty to see (1.5 to 2 days at least).

I was going from Liverpool to Cambridge, so I figured I'd stop at Cosford for its enticing RAF museum. I have to say right here that it is not easy to get there by public transport only, unless you have a lot of time. In order to save 1H off the trip, I took a trail to Stafford, got off there and caught a somewhat expensive cab to Cosford (public transport only requires going to Birmingham, and then changing to a once per hour slow train, plus a 10mn walk from the station to the museum).

I got there just before 10:00 as was my plan, and they nicely agreed to stash my luggage which was not a given in the UK (they are more against it as everything is now a bomb apparently). The best part though was that I was able to arrange a private guided tour with a guide called Frank who was a wealth of knowledge on the museum and gave me a 3.5h tour of everything. It was absolutely fantastic, and well worth the 50GBP donation to the otherwise free museum.

The museum is big, 4 different hangars:

this prototype plane actually had an alternate T tail made for it, but it didn't work as the elevator could stall at high angles

the english electric lightening is really a cool powerful plane

when the harrier went to a 98.5 degree angle, it could fly backwards

the brits invented ejection seats and made many different kinds

Frank giving me cool explanations like how this plane had motors to speed up the wheels to landing speed before they touched the ground, how cool is that?

brakes and motor in the same wheel

plane to test alternate pilot positions

this was uncomfortable but allowed the pilot to take more G forces (that was before G suits)

this one is a little bit black bird looking

The section on Japanese aircraft, was surprisingly good:

KI-46-III reconnaissance plane

the Yokosuka Ohka suicide powered rocket, was sobering

Spitfire Mk I

Nice german planes too:

Ju 88R-1 with advanced radar

German U-boats even had this towed autogyro, it didn't have power but would be towed by the submarine and take off high enough to see far away targets

let's not forget the first turbojet powered Me 262, so ahead of its time

and the Me163B-1a komet was liquid fuel rocket powered, super cool too (with dynamo generator in the front for electrical power)

This plane attached to a bomber turned into a bomb that work be flown to and dropped on the target, was interesting too:

A few russian planes too:

More planes in another hangar:

And a good rocket and missile collection too, the germans were way ahead during the end of WWII:

And that was it for the visit. Frank was a fantastic tour guide and really made the visit a lot better. A huge thanks to him and Cosford for putting us in touch.
Getting out timely was not trivial either, but byo sheer luck I was able to call an uber that happened to be driving by and got me 10mn after I called it. Normally it would have been a hard to get cab and a longer trip.

The vehicles section was fair:

Other various displays:

There was an interesting exhibit that showed how different drugs worked on the brain:

Animals:

The last floor also had interesting displays on existing and future technologies:

All in all, worth the stop

Birmingham was not meant to be a destination on my trip, but iven that the Cosford RAF Museum (click me) was definitely a destination for me. It was a pain to get to (had ot take a train to Stafford and an expensive uber to get there without wasting an extra 1H+), but it was definitely worth it, especially with the private 3H+ tour that I got, it was fantastic:

FOMO me, instead of spending more time in the museum, elected to take an uber that was driving by (they are rare in the area, so that was a stroke of luck), I decided to spend the rest of the day in Birmingham and go visit the Thinktank Science Museum (clickme), which actually was a fairly decent science museum:

I then had just a few minutes outside of the train station before catching a long and slow transcontinental train to Cambridge:

There are multiple Imperial War Museums in the UK, and Duxford is likely the biggest plane museum in the country, 7 hangars and next to an active runway used to demonstrations and flights you can rent/pay for. I was there for opening time (took an uber from cambridge as it's not convenient to go by public transport):

first impression: it's big

I had a tour booked to get a private tour of a spitfire and sit in the cockpit. I didn't know that for just 60 times more money, I could have flown in one for 30mn. A bargain :)

this was the actual aircraft, recovered on the beach in normandy

I then went to sit in it

After my tour, I went to visit the hangars:

auto gyro

I went back to hangar #1 to see the concorde that closes earlier:

They had one of the 6 concorde prototypes in the world. I had seen severals, but prototypes are always special, so it was worth seeing:

it never had passengers, it was a test airplane for multiple systems including anti-icing and engine management

the seats in the passenger versions, were much smaller

lots of test equipment

cockpit was off limits

the numbers were references to see how much icing happened

harrier engines are awesome

Next, I went to the restoration hangar, lots of planes being worked on:

Next was a small control room that re-enacted the only real air attack from Germany that was stopped:

Further down was a very nice hangar filled with US planes. Not as interesting to me since I had seem them all many times in the US, but still worth the walk through:

Last, but not least, was land warfare, this was a war museum, not just a plane museum:

And that was it for the visit, I finished just 30mn before closing time.
Also, while I was there, I got to

Those planes did inspire me to do my own flight Over Cambridge From IWM Duxford.

Getting back home was also not easy, no ubers at all, and taxis were a 45mn wait. I got lucky and shared a cab with a woman who had already called a cab herself and was also going to the train station in cambridge.

Very yummy dinner was had:

After arriving the previous night and checking in my hotel, my "we had never met in person" LED hacker friend, Louis Beaudoin of Pixelmatix fame. Since I had my dual CPU LED outfit with me for the festivals I was going to, I showed it to him, and we geeked out on LEDs:

The next day, I went to the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, hands down the best flight museum in England with an active runway and all kinds of scenic flights:

Seriously, go see my report of the Imperial War Museum in Duxford

The other cool thing is that while I was there, I rented a plane to do a scenic flight over Cambridge to get great views (clickme). A few examples below:

It was not possible to get an uber back to town (only there in the morning), and getting a cab also took a very long time, but thankfully I found someone who had called one already and shared her cab back to the train station. Soon after, I went back our to meet the Woddhouses at Midsummer House, an excellent 2 michelin star rated restaurant

The next morning, I went to meet Anna and Paul who were nice enough to come meet me for breakfast to catch up:

I then went on in town to visit several of the smaller museums: Sedgwick Museum of Earth Science, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum of Classical Archaeology, and he Fitzwilliam Museum (that one was a highlight). Thanks to Louis for giving tips on what to go see. By then I had finally figured out how to use the stupid scooters they had lying around, you literally had to give them a valid drivers license and ID before you were trusted to use one, and only in some streets, as many were geofenced out...

I then went to meet Louis and family for some punting which he suggested, and that was a great idea: it is actually the best way to see nice views from colleges from the water side:

I gave punting a shot at the end. I wasn't too terrible ;)

I then had a timed entry for the small Whipple Museum of the History of Science:

and the time I had left, I scootered around to see one college that did let me in, and others from the outside:

It was then time to hurry back to my hotel by the train station and catch a train back to London for Trance on the Thames.

As part of my Trance in Europe trip, I went to:

And just like that, my trip of England was over.

Highlights:

Lowlights:

Anyway, That was a good trip, happy that I got to go and see a bunch of things I had missed in my last trip.