06/02 Ice and snow as far as the eye can
see. Packed up and got on the road. After getting a little bit stuck in Bessy
first… The big girl doesn’t like the snow too much that’s for sure. With a bit
of pushing Purdy got us trucking and we made it to Cambridge to the Duxford
Imperial Air Museum. Wow. This is the coolest place ever! 5 hangers chock full
of air history. Full size Concord, B52, SR-71, Lanc, Superfortress, all the WW2
fighters, the list goes on. Even Purdy was impressed!
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| The awesome collection at Duxford |
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| TOP GUN... |
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| ICBM - Hope they never start using these people... |
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The Rolls Royce Merlin
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The SR-71 Blackbird... Some quick facts
STILL the fastest & highest, The SR-71 was the world's fastest and highest-flying operational manned aircraft throughout its career. On 28 July 1976, (that's a 36 year old record!) SR-71 serial number 61-7962 broke the world record for its class: an "absolute altitude record" for a prolonged flight of 85,069 feet (25,929 m). That same day SR-71, serial number 61-7958 set an absolute speed record of 1,905.81 knots (2,193.2 mph; 3,529.6 km/h). That's one amazing machine...
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| Nice aviators... |
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Sunderland Flying Boat - Big
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| A WW2 Messershmitt 109 that landed in southern England |
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| Ready for take off... |
Left there mid afternoon
and found some fuel and gas for the van. Arrived in Mansfield (Sherwood
Forrest) late, and TomTom takes us up a narrow country lane. B#$tard… Bessy
gets stuck on the most ridiculous iced up frozen piece of the Arctic I have
ever seen… We have to take the hire car off the trailer and the trailer off Bessy.
We get the trailer over to the side of the road against the hedgerow and the
car into someone’s front yard, then reverse Bessy about 500 meters back up the
slope we just came down. I walk back down the pitch black icy lane and there are animals in the hedgerow making a lot of noise, and I cant see what it is. Pooing now... I finally lock the trailer to the fence and give it all up
for the night. Get to Sherwood Forrest Park finally, and the lovely lady shows
us to the spot in the pitch black. The whole road and all the campground is just a sheet of ice. Basically anything that's wet at dusk becomes ice. Wow. Winter doesn’t
muck around up here…
07/02 So after waking up and getting
everything filled / emptied and a shopping spree at the stupidly cheap
campground store, we get a lift in a Pajero to pick up the trailer. As soon as
we round the corner I can see that it’s not there… Mild panic sets in and Purdy
wants a divorce. Nice lady says don’t panic, the farmer probably moved it.
Still crapping myself, we get to the Manor and associated farmhouses, to find
that the trailer is indeed there and thankfully they just moved it to get some
tractors past. LUCKY… Purdy is now well over Tom Tom. I’m not far off… One of the family (who I wont name)
says we won’t be organized to leave the UK for a long time… This is what I love
to hear, people telling us we can’t do this or that. It’s just inspiration to
try twice as hard and do it just to prove them all wrong! So we immediately book the ferry tickets to Spain for next week, it's too cold here anyway! Park up for the night in
the front of a Mercedes Benz dealer, still proper cold and frozen.
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| Snow Ninja... I so wish she had fallen over right now! |
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