APTA is the Adastral Park Twinning Association, based at BT Group's Research and Development site at Martlesham Heath. It is open to all employees in the Ipswich area.

Twinning is all about exchange visits and getting to know foreign cultures and languages. It's a great way of making friends in other countries. People take part for all sorts of different reasons, but the original reason twinning started was to bring people together from different countries after WWII to help make war less likely in future.

APTA is twinned with France Telecom's Amiens section in France, and Deutsche Telecom's Darmstadt section in Germany. We have regular exchange visits, alternating each year, such that each year we travel to either France or Germany once and act as hosts once.

Our Darmstadt visits generally take place around the end of May. We go there in odd-numbered years (e.g. 2007).

Our Amiens visits generally take place around the end of August. We go there in even-numbered years.