Throckmorton Airshow

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times........ One thing I can say though, is that it was a Dickens of a day! We went over to the airshow at Throckmorton as we knew that the Vulcan would be displaying there. Now, I have been to many big events over the years; air shows, rock concerts, festivals etc., but this was without doubt the worst organised event I have ever been to. I don't know whether the fault lay with the Police or the Organisers, but access to the venue for all attendees coming from all directions was down one narrow lane into one entrance. At one point we were about quarter of a mile away from the entrance (we didn't know at the time) but the Police had closed the road up to the car park. As a result, we had to drive right round the airfield to the other side to come in on the same road from the other direction. That added about three miles to the journey, and that three miles took two and a half hours to complete! The airshow was due to start at 12.30pm and we were in good time; we actually entered the site at 3pm! Of course, we had tuned in to the local BBC station but there was no useful information about the problem, just lots of phone calls from people in the traffic saying how long they had waited. I bet the newsroom loved it!

I said we had only really gone to see the Vulcan; it started its display just as we walked onto the airfield so we were just lucky enough to see it, and truly magnificent it was too! There would have been hundreds of people behind us who missed it though, and as there were no tickets available on the day, all these people would have already paid. We'd missed quite a lot, including the Blenheim bomber that has only just returned to flying after restoration, which was a shame.

There was talk of there having been car accidents in the area which had caused problems; frankly, there may well have been but even I could see the situation had been badly managed. Never mind, we have more airshows to visit soon, but I won't rush back to this one.

My picture is of the Breitling Wingwalkers; how those girls do that is completely beyond me! One or two more shots (including the Vulcan) on the link below - I took loads but have only had time to post up a few so far.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/10435524@N07/sets/72157654136543305