Visiting The Wight Military Heritage Museum

 I love a good museum, me.

  I'm particularly keen on military or aviation museums and after doing most of the ones in Portsmouth and Southampton, I fancied doing something a bit further afield.  

  Then I found out about the Wight Military & Heritage Museum just outside Cowes and promptly put it on my list of places to see. 

Well, after several years, this weekend I finally got around to it.  Naturally I managed to pick a day when it was frigging raining.

  You don't need to know about how I got to the museum but I will say that the most awkward part of the journey wasn't getting to the island, it was finding the damn bus-stop in Cowes.

  I also managed to miss the stop for the museum so had to do some trudging back down the road.  Damp trudging, because as mentioned earlier, it was raining. 

Anyway, I finally got there and the first thing I saw made it all worthwhile because sat outside was this:

 A Conqueror heavy tank

 I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Conqueror. It was supposed to be some extra firepower to help the Centurions deal with oncoming Soviet armour. Luckily it never came to that. 

  Also, my dad drove one of these as a target tank. He told me once that they had a card table set up inside.  Make of that what you will.

 

The entrance and just next to it, a shed with books in it. 

 And why not?

 Once past reception and inevitable gift shop I moved on to a display of weapons: cases with assorted rifles, machineguns and other small arms.

Next up: a chicken. 

 Well it did say this was a military & heritage museum.

After another display of WW2 home front stuff set up as shop-fronts I got into the good stuff. 

 A French truck/ambulance from the Indo-China war. 

An absolute behemoth of a truck. A WW2 Scammell.

According to the volunteer I got chatting to, after the war a lot of these ended up working for fairgrounds. It also took a lot of time, effort and money to get this one back into working conditions.

 An Abbot Self-propelled gun.

 

 There was an option to sit in the drivers seat after a small donation but after climbing on-board I quickly realised that there was  no way I was going to fit into the driver's compartment and even assuming I managed it, I sure as hell wasn't getting back out again without a crowbar, a gallon of grease and some personal injury.  I settled for sitting on top of it which is still cool enough. 

After that we get something rare:

 

 This is an experimental mounting for four Polsten 20mm cannon which was tested on the island but never went into production. 

  See that door behind it? That's where we are going next.  

The next room had a collection of cool stuff including an ongoing rebuild on a Britten-Norman Islander

Plus a Saracen APC

They had some other AFVs and guns but the pictures didn't come out that well so here's a squaddie tea set.

 The British Army has always understood the value of a good cuppa. 

Hmm, I thought I wonder if there's anything outside. 

Yes, there was.  A Centurion AVRE for starters. Which my dad also drove. 

That's a big gun isn't it?

There was also a Centurion Recovery vehicle.

 

And something rare, if a bit knocked about. A prototype Centurion SP Gun.  According to the volunteer, they fitted it with a 5 inch gun but unfortunately the recoil was too strong and it kept breaking itself.

Now while I was poking about outside , I couldn't help noticing some other vehicles a little further away.  Or wrecks, rather.

 I'm not sure if I was supposed to go take a closer look but in lieu of any big red signs reading "No" I wandered over.

Jackpot. hat I found were he remains of two Conqueror recovery tanks and a conqueror gun tank, looking very forlorn but still striking.

All of which did leave me feeling a bit sad that the poor things were in such a state but at least I got to see them.

 Finally I set off back to West Cowes but did pause long enough for a selfie!

And that was the Wight Military & Heritage museum. Did I get wet? Yes.  Did I have to put a bit of effort in to get there? Yes.  

Was it worth it? Oh very much yes.

I didn't post all the pics I took so there's more to see than what I showed you.

A big thanks to the staff at the museum who were very pleasant indeed.

That's all folks.