Saturday! The alarm wakes me at seven, I seem to have adjusted to the local time.. I’m sure the late night playing Scrabble has something to do with it. We had discussed the sights in the area yesterday and decided on the Army Flying Museum, as a change of pace from the old buildings the last days. I’ve visited a few aeronautic museums already, like Castle Air Museum in California and the Royal Air Force Museum Midlands (see my post from 2019), as well as the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military history in Brussels during a corona staycation in 2021, but they’re all different and in any case, you can never see enough air planes!
We walk in around ten, unsure of how long it’ll take us, but there’s a café with lunch food so it doesn’t matter. Aside from two hangars with planes and helicopters, there’s also modern and extensive informational displays, documenting the start of army flying in England and how it evolved, all the way to the current day. We learn for example that this museum is definitely not about the RAF and also not about the navy flight department, but that balloons, gliders, planes and choppers were used to support infantry. A very well informed volunteer, sensing a willing audience, adds stories and details, often referring to specific events or people, which makes the information on the panels come to life.
In counterpoint to all the steel in the hangars, another volunteer has set up a display of knitwear and knitting tools, showing the knitting work that women in England did for the deployed soldiers, as well as examples of what people in the time of WW1 and WW2 would wear. For example, elastics were not to be had, so knit knickers were fastened with buttons. Worn out sleeves on a jacket were replaced with knitwear and decorations were home made, for example created of a broken zipper. We chat about different types of wool, where it can be sourced from and the advantages of merino wool.
The eye catchers of the museum are the four attack helicopters, the oldest a Huey from the Vietnam era and the newest a just retired Apache which flew in Afghanistan. Upstairs, an interactive video explains which systems are used in this Apache and in which conditions it can operate, very nicely done.
We lunch in the café, with a view of the take off and landing strip of the army base next door, but since it’s a Saturday there are no flights scheduled. I have a decent Lorraine quiche with chips (aka fries), it’s honestly hard to find your daily portion of vegetables when you’re always eating out, so I decide to not worry about a healthy diet for the duration of this holiday.
We have an afternoon of board games planned, but we still do a brief stop at the Danesbury Iron Age Hillfort nearby. Again, not the first one I’ve seen, but you have to realize that these are pre-roman. This specific one was built and inhabited for 400 and in its hey day more than 400 people lived here, with outlying settlements for grains and livestock. This site was extensively excavated and from the remains the historians conclude that it was a short and brutal life. The site was abandoned for unknown reasons, even before the Romans arrived. Even though the only visible remainders are the giant, defensive earth works, it is awe inspiring to walk around in a place with such a long history. Less picturesque than Stonehenge, but more relatable, because it was a place for normal life and not some arcane purpose.
On our way back to the cottage we stop by a local store for some snacks and breakfast necessities, then after a brief ride home (left, left, left!) we’re ready to get started on our boardgames, around three pm. Five of us tackle Pandemic with the Extreme danger extension, I and two others embark on a game of Scrabble. I manage to win an unassailable lead by putting down gesneden, that’s all my letters, plus on a 3 x word tile, so I rake in about 85 points in one go! We heat up leftovers (pizza and spaghetti) for dinner and wrap up the evening with a few rounds of Presidenten. Or rather, I write my blog while the others play and have heated debates about the rules, it’s quite entertaining.
Febe writes 