Fairford Air Tattoo

The promise of a dour and cloudy day was splendidly modified to give blue skies and warm sunshine, but I took Morrigan for a run out to Fairford anyway. I'm afraid I didn't buy a ticket, but found my way to the far end of the runway, albeit on the wrong side of the chain link fence. I'm no airplane aficionado, and neither were many people near me; nearly everything old was being called a Spitfire! Even I knew a helicopter when I saw one...

The main picture of course is the last airworthy Vulcan Bomber, XH558, accompanied by the RAF Red Arrows Display Team. The Vulcan is on her farewell tour, and will be grounded at the end of the year. Like her domestic contemporary Concorde she is utterly beautiful and as environmentally unfriendly as it's possible to be, even without a nuclear payload.

I've dropped a trio of Spitfires into the extra photo. There were many more flying today. I recall my mum telling me the sound of the Spitfire engine was the sound of safety - as soon as she heard them fly over her home in war-time Suffolk she knew she could get out from under the kitchen table.