Duxford with the grandchildren

It's been many, many years since I last visited IWM Duxford.  That was when the children were quite young.  I had judged that the youngest of the two boys was now old enough to deal with the distances involved and also to have enough of an appreciation of what he was looking at to enjoy the day.

So, I was excited about the visit, and it seems the boys were too.  Thankfully, the journey was easy and the traffic light. We arrived in the second half hour slot for the day.  Even on the approach, the hangars are impressive.  I had one thing I absolutely wanted to see - the Concorde, after that the boys could lead me round and enjoy the day.  

We started in a big open space, with instructions for making paper aeroplanes, and I helped each of them to complete the origami required.  It's not a skill any of us possess.  There were challenges - how far can you get it to fly, can you get it to fly through 2 hoops at different heights?  They tried.  I had to be patient, it's not for retired little boys, just young ones. We had limited success, but they seemed to enjoy themselves.

Then off to Concorde - right up the end of the hangar.  It's impossible to get good pictures of most of the planes because they are packed together so tightly.  Here's a shot down Concorde's wing, which I hope gives a flavour of the plane.

If you don't know, it's very narrow and VERY sleek.

They have other commercial planes too, the Comet 4, from the days when Britain led the world in aircraft manufacture, is the best example.  There is also a plane outside where the aircraft shots in the Netflix series 'The Crown' were filmed.

There are plenty of warplanes too. The TSR2 (Tactical strike and reconnaissance) prototype is there.  The TSR2 was a world leading fighter when its development was cancelled by a very short-sighted government.  I did not see a Harrier jump jet, which is a shame.

We were pretty much done in the main hangar by lunchtime and went out to the edge of the air field to see the planes take off and land, but not the promised spitfire.  We ate lunch and the boys played with their paper planes when there was no other action.

You can just about see the blue paper plane near the top of the picture.

In the afternoon, we visited the other hangars and the Battle of Britain war rooms including a very good video display of a sortie, making use of the room, so we could see how it worked.

The American Planes display was impressive too, with a Blackbird and a truly enormous B52. The land war building is also very good, but by the time we got there the boys were flagging a bit - it's a long walk to the other end of the site.

Coming back, we heard and then saw the Spitfire. The pilot was doing loop-the-loop and barrel rolls. Then there's the sound of a spitfire - I don't understand why, I was not born until more than 10 years after WWII ended, but the sound that spitfires makes is somehow iconic.  Between each stunt there was a long, fast, low flight from one end of the runway to the other.

What a brilliant day we had.  I just hope the boys enjoyed it as much as I did.