Airport

We are quite used to seeing the Airbus Belugas overhead whenever we are in Chester, but haven’t yet managed to get a decent shot of one. With our visits to Chester likely to be a lot less frequent once the flat is sold, we thought we’d better do something about it.
Obviously, the best place to go was the grandly named “Chester Airport” - aka the runways at the Airbus factory at Broughton. There was also the added attraction of the “Chocks Away Diner” which is situated in the Aviation Park, next to the main runway, and is famed for the excellence of its food. You have to go through airport security to get to it, but that just involves leaving your name and car details at the gatehouse.
The breakfast was excellent and highly recommended. Once finished, we made our way outside to see what was around. There are several Cold War USSR planes in a sorry state of repair scattered around, though no one knows where they came from and who owns them.
And then it was time for the Belugas. These specialist freighters were developed to carry large Airbus components from their factories around Europe to the main assembly plant at Toulouse in France. The factory at Broughton makes wings, and these were previously transported by barge, ship and lorry. Not exactly quick and it was a nightmare journey for the lorries trying to negotiate small French villages in the middle of the night. But the Beluga XL can carry two wings at the same time, and can obviously get them where they are needed in a matter of hours rather than days.
There was a Beluga XL already parked up when we got there and we watched a standard Beluga (one wing capacity) take off. As he climbed into the sky, the Beluga XL in the photo was already on his final approach and touched down a few minutes later.
Not easy to get good photos because of all the fencing around the runways, and we were tipped off about a place just outside the airport where you can see the planes pass low overhead just before they touch down. We will be back in Chester next week, so might try and find it. Though not before a visit to the diner for breakfast first…