Bovington Tank Museum- Bristol or Southampton?

[Knitwit99]

Ds is desperate to visit here but it's so far away from us. We could fly to Southampton and drive for 1.5hrs or fly to Bristol and drive for 2.5hrs. It's much cheaper to fly to Bristol.
We are planning to go for a long weekend Friday to Monday. Which city would we most want to spend a weekend in? DS is 13 and into vehicles, science, military history, not interested in churches and historic buildings. So I thought there might be lots of naval history in Southampton? Assuming we visit the tank museum on the Saturday we'll have all day Sunday and most of Monday.
And has anyone ever been to the Tank Museum? Is it as good as ds is hoping it will be?

If he likes vehicles you could link in a trip to beauli motor museum in the new forest in (about and hour and a half from Southampton)

Ds loved bovington. Me less so!

My ds loved Bovington but I sent him with his granddad as I can't think of anything worse! Make sure you go on a day when they have demonstrations. There's lots to see in both places so I would probably go with whichever had the cheapest/most convenient flights. If you stay in Southampton you could also get to the historic docks in Portsmouth which he might like as well as Beaulieu.

Portsmouth is better than Southampton for military history. Or you could fly to Southampton and back from Bristol (and see the SS Great Britain!

When we went to the tank museum, we stayed in a lovely B&B in Weymouth, although that might not appeal so much to your DS.

I think Southampton airport would be preferable, Bristol is quite a distance.

If you are interested in the TE Lawrence connection at Bovington, you can also drive out to see his grave (lovely tea rooms there) and his house (National Trust I think). Bovington is great if you like military history, which we do .

I would stay closer to Bovington in Dorchester, Blandford or surrounding areas if I were you.

That way you can also visit:

Fleet Air Arm museum in Yeovilton.
Haynes Motor Musuem.
Tyneham (ghost village).
Lulworth.
Monkey World.

I'm about 40 minutes from Bovington, DH and DS love going, they reckon you need more than a day there to really take it in.

Bristol would be easier to fly to to drive down to the area, Southampton is just atrocious to drive to and from in the summer months.

Hope this helps :)

Where about are you. If you're London ish then maybe Bletchley Park who put on tank exhibitions and the RAF Museum in Hendon.

We'll be flying from Edinburgh. Couldn't get much further away really. Hoping to go mid-September when there is some special thing going on. Does that still count as summer for avoiding Southampton traffic?

My DS is mad about tanks. He was at Tankfest last weekend at Bovington, my older son drove, they stayed in Weymouth the night before.
The coast is very beautiful around there, but my DS is not interested, so they just went to Bovington then back home.
I took him to Tankfest last year and was very impressed by the museum and workshop, it is really well set out and must be amazing if you like tanks and military vehicles. There is a cafe so good for a full day, you can usually book a ride on a truck around the arena.
I can also recommend Tankfest my son loved it this year, mind you he is Tank mad, he’s going to the mesuems in Germany and Russia this summer just to look at tanks.

Forgot to say Tankfest is a 3 day festival of tanks/military things that happens at the end of June at Bovington.

I really could not be less interested in tanks but DS (8) loves them and visiting Bovington was, for him, the highlight of a six week trip to the UK and Europe (we are in NZ, so it was a bloody expensive trip to see tanks). That said, even I managed to find it quite interesting.
They have a great cafe and comfy chairs and lots of lovely young men in uniform to look at.
We were there from opening to close. He wanted to go back again the next day!!!

Possibly look at Northe Fort in Weymouth too. Historic fort, including a cold war nuclear bunker.

Not my thing at all but male family members loved the Tank Museum.

The historic dockyards at Portsmouth have loads to see and are an easy daytrip from Southampton either driving if you have a hire car or by train.

What is his stance on concorde?

This is close to Bristol City centre aerospacebristol.org/

He might also like the Signals Museum (check admission reqs, you'll all need acceptable ID) www.royalsignalsmuseum.co.uk/

DH loves tanks and model tanks so we go most years .. Its actually not too bad, we stay somewhere nice for a weekend and spend a day at the museum. DH takes millions of photos and I end up reading a book in the cafe, or sitting outside in the sun eating an icecream ( I could also go across the road to Monkey world) .. As boring museums go its one of the best

I’d definitely check out the programme of events and plan your walk around ...for instance one of the big tanks they let you inside but only for an hour or two each day. There are loads of ex Tank crew around and they are generally lovely and will chat for ages. The giftshop is large too so be prepared !

We've done both locations. I reckon that you can do the tank museum in less than a day but we took the best part of 2 days to do the whole of the naval dockyards. It does cost extra to see the Mary Rose so we didn't bother.
If he's into transport there's also the helicopter museum at Weston Super Mare or the Steam museum in Swindon (conveniently situated next to a designer outlet).
If you go to the Concorde museum in Bristol or the SS Great Britain and keep your tickets you can get in again for free for up to a year.

The Mary Rose is amazing.