Bomb Bay!

The alarm rang early this morning. The Wonderspouse filled me with tea, gave me breakfast, and then I set off at around 6.30 for Scharwenka's house, taking with me my camera, spare batteries etc, a large umbrella, warm clothing, the airshow tickets, and, bizarrely, my violin (which Scharwenka's sister, who is a professional violinist, is borrowing to practise on while she's over from the States).

On arrival at Scharwenka's we loaded in the picnic bag and Scharwenka's stuff, looked at the weather predictions more in hope than expectation, and set off for Fairford!

The journey was smooth and quick - just an hour from Scharwenka's to showground. We left most of the stuff in the car since we had a parking spot really near to the entrance (the advantage of going early) and headed, first of all, for Vulcan Village.

Then, we did something I've been wanting to do for AGES, and that we've failed to do partly through (a) lack of knowledge and being too shy (owing to illness) to ask and partly through (b) just timing things wrongly and being at the wrong end of the runway at all times. We went on an underwing tour of the wonderful XH558.

This was brilliant - partly because it had just started to rain again - and what better way to shelter from the rain than under her enormous delta wings, and partly because it was, well, quite simply BRILLIANT!

The view you see here is looking up into the bomb bay, right in the middle of her underside. It was XM607's equivalent bay that held the bombs that reached the airstrip at Port Stanley during the Falklands Conflict. Being so close to all that history was thrilling beyond belief.

We were allowed right up to XH558, asked only to refrain from touching her (in order not to risk damage which might make her unairworthy) or going beyond the blue cones (we were on the "live" side of the airfield at this point and I guess they didn't want us to get squashed)!

I could go on for ever about Vulcans and so on - if you want to read more about how I came to love them, then you can see an old blog post of mine here (some of the later links don't work any more, but you can still get to the relevant places if you follow your nose).

Suffice to say, it was a brilliant tour, to be so close to such a magnificant aeroplane that I could almost tickle her tummy! It had to be today's blip! If you want to see her in action - check out the thumbnail below for exactly one year ago and you'll see her in flight!

Anyway, back to the day.

After listening to me say "cool" for the zillionth time, Scharwenka took me back to the car (as I was getting peckish) and we had an early picnic lunch. Then we equipped ourselves with chairs and umbrellas and full airshow kit and went to take up our places by the runway for the majority of the flying display. There's really too much to describe here, and I'll be posting an album of photos somewhere (I'll let you know where) when I have a bit more time - have to go out in a moment.

Memorable things that stick in my head now are: the Saudi Hawks, the Red Arrows and Frecce Tricolori, the Chinook and Apache, small planes towing gliders, training planes, the Rafale, the BBMF Lancaster, the Spit & Hurricane, the Spit & Mustang, the F16s, the Typhoon, the Warthog, the Hunters, and of course XH558 herself, flown by Martin Withers!

Brilliant brilliant brilliant day! I could write for ever if I wasn't being summoned to drink the tea that is probably almost cold by now! I came home sunburnt, windburnt and tired!

But very happy!

p.s. You can see Scharwenka's blip for the day here!