This is Brooklands.

The next installment of our tour of interesting places near our house takes us to Brooklands. This was the world's first purpose-built motor track and is commonly referred to as the birthplace of British motorsport (or so I'm told). It also has an interesting aviation history, which may help explain the old planes we spotted by the side of the road.

The original race track was built over a huge area and also included an aerodrome. Since its demise around WWII, it's now a multi-functional place with a supermarket, department stores, child-care centre, playground, car showroom, bike trails, post office sorting centre and museum amongst other uses. The nice thing is there's still a few sections of banked track to be seen, so the history of the place is right there to see.


Appropriately named bus on the local merry-go-round.


Our intrepid photographer climbed high up the old track to get this shot.... it's much steeper than it looks.


The aforementioned playground...


...with appropriately themed play equipment.


Note to self: take Mum & Dad here when they visit.