Well we successfully made it back into the UK yesterday and picked up our hire car from Stansted airport. First stop was the Duxforth Airfield where they have a few museums set up.
We hadn't heard of the place until we were chatting with the Gladstone couple at the Normandy tour. They told us they thought it was great but to be careful as you need more time than you would think.... and how right they were.
When we got out of the first hanger we realised that we had been in there for over an hour & we still hadn't been to the two main hangers. So we decided to walk to the other end of the complex where they were. The highlight of the trip out there was definitely the next hanger - Land Warfare Hall. This hall is a museum of every piece of army equipment that you could imagine - tanks, car, hats, guns, shoes, artillery... did we mention tanks :) Phil's aim this trip was to get a picture with some WW2 tanks and this place provided more photo ops than we had time to take them. It was great to see so much of the equipment that we had been told about during the Normandy & Ieper tours.
Next hanger - American Air Museum... again another massive collection of planes and army gear. The most interesting thing here was a series of glass panels that made up a border fence outside the museum. Each panel had little planes printed all over it. The panels went on and on - we couldn't fit them all in one photo. This wall was representative of all the US planes lost during war. A truly amazing sight and one very hard to fathom.
We had a quick look in the gift shop and then got back in the car to head to our next stop - which we needed to get to before sunset - Stonehenge.
Our plan was to head back to Stonehenge this morning to get a closer look but, as has been the case a few times this trip, we were delayed with a little bit of travel belly and didn't end up leaving the hotel until just after 10 - and we needed to have the car to Reading by 11:30 (just over an hours drive away) or pay for another day of hire. So we made the decision to head off and get on to the next adventure.
We hadn't heard of the place until we were chatting with the Gladstone couple at the Normandy tour. They told us they thought it was great but to be careful as you need more time than you would think.... and how right they were. We arrived in the car park at 12.30 and pretty much ran thought most of it and we didn't get out until 4:30ish. There are half a dozen different hangers which house different kinds of information. The first one we went to had a collection of different planes that had been restored by the staff at the airfield (and some volunteers). It also had a "History of Aviation" area which had a time line of videos, data boards, pictures, etc and also had an interactive area (Craig - photos will prove I played Flight Sim :) )
When we got out of the first hanger we realised that we had been in there for over an hour & we still hadn't been to the two main hangers. So we decided to walk to the other end of the complex where they were. The highlight of the trip out there was definitely the next hanger - Land Warfare Hall. This hall is a museum of every piece of army equipment that you could imagine - tanks, car, hats, guns, shoes, artillery... did we mention tanks :) Phil's aim this trip was to get a picture with some WW2 tanks and this place provided more photo ops than we had time to take them. It was great to see so much of the equipment that we had been told about during the Normandy & Ieper tours.
Next hanger - American Air Museum... again another massive collection of planes and army gear. The most interesting thing here was a series of glass panels that made up a border fence outside the museum. Each panel had little planes printed all over it. The panels went on and on - we couldn't fit them all in one photo. This wall was representative of all the US planes lost during war. A truly amazing sight and one very hard to fathom.By the time we got out of this hanger it was about 4pm and this was the time we had said was the very very latest that we could be leaving. So we skipped two hangers which we thought would be of least interest to us but we did make two more quick stops - one of the restoration hangers and the Battle of Britain hanger.
We had a quick look in the gift shop and then got back in the car to head to our next stop - which we needed to get to before sunset - Stonehenge.We made pretty good time so we did a quick stop at the hotel to check in as we weren't sure what time reception closed and it turned out the hotel was about 3km from the stones.
We were so impressed at our timing... until we got there and found that it had closed at 6pm... current time was 6:30... DOH!!!
We did get quite a few pics over the fence and we got to see our first beautiful sunset this holiday. Even from a distance Stonehenge is quite impressive but not quite what either of us was expecting ... very stange to see something so impressive sitting in the middle of sheep farms and motorways. But regardless, it is amazing to think that they have been there 5000+ years.
Our plan was to head back to Stonehenge this morning to get a closer look but, as has been the case a few times this trip, we were delayed with a little bit of travel belly and didn't end up leaving the hotel until just after 10 - and we needed to have the car to Reading by 11:30 (just over an hours drive away) or pay for another day of hire. So we made the decision to head off and get on to the next adventure. We dropped the car off to Reading (with 2 minutes to spare) and got a taxi to the train station. We got the train to Paddington & found our hotel - which this time is much closer (about 2 minutes walk). And now we are working out what we are going to do with our last day and a half in Europe.
We will no doubt have another blog or two before we go so until then .. love to all
Cheers
Phil & Nic
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