On safari

As part of this years Science festival the WW2 airfield in Birsay was opened up today. We were only allowed to drive through as the buildings are in a pretty bad state and they didn't want people wandering around them. It felt like a very peculiar safari.

I was very brave and jumped out of the car to grab this pic of the old cinema. There were lots of other buildings - control towers, storerooms, gas training blocks, firestations, toilets and a squash court (to keep the pilots fit apparently) etc. etc. But this was my favourite. The main part of the cinema joining this front section was a large nissen hut and if you look closely you can see the holes that the film was projected through. I'd love to see it in it's original condition. Does anyone else think it has a look of Tuscany about it?

After our safari, we got to see some large scale model planes and a display of some of them flying which was pretty cool. Arrow nabbed the camera at this point. There seemed to be a certain theme to today as the boys spent all morning building Airfix kits on the kitchen table. I'm expecting a request for one of the bigger kits any day... from their dad!

BTW - The base was a navy airport which was known as HMS Tern. Apparently the navy called their airlfields HMS because they liked to think they were on a ship...?!! Those based here would always say that they were based at HMS Tern as they tended to get a rather odd response when they used the real name Twatt Airfield... I wonder why?