PC and Cookie's Big Adventure (feat. Navy Bird), the CedB cut

[perdu]

Castle Bromwich Roundabout

 

The mucky grey Spitfire sculptures/cut outs then into Castle Vale housing Estate to tread the boards of the great Alex Henshall's location for "Sigh For A Merlin"?

 

Its what I'd have done, should a asked me

[perdu]

And the walls of the Jaguar factory still bear traces of 1939 camo paintworks

 

This being of course where so many Lancasters and Spitfires began their defence of the realm

[roginoz]

By 'eck, that was a quick two weeks, what a full itinerary and entertaining travelog.

Bet you're a bit cream crackered, Ced !!

 

Hate to think what the guys excess baggage costs would have been.......!

 

Thank you [all] for a most entertaining and amusing thread.

Rog

[Terry1954]

1 hour ago, roginoz said:

Hate to think what the guys excess baggage costs would have been

They were doing fine till that last visit to Frome Model Centre for just one more model....... 😂

 

Terry

[FalkeEins]

1 hour ago, roginoz said:

By 'eck, that was a quick two weeks, what a full itinerary and entertaining travelog.

Bet you're a bit cream crackered, Ced !!

 

..indeed, thanks guys!

[CedB]

All packed:

 

 

Small trunk my bottom T-Roc. They all went in except PC’s third bag of kits and books:

 

 

Quick visit to Runnymede Memorial:

 

 

Then off to Heathrow. Safe flight guys! And yes, this time I got out of the airport in one go  

[perdu]

Ced I think I am thanking you for all of us for looking after our friends so well

Sir Ced, hero host to intrepid hero visitors

 

What a hell of an itinerary, proper job Ced

 

Proper job mate

[Avereda]

Just now, perdu said:

Ced I think I am thanking you for all of us for looking after our friends so well

Sir Ced, hero host to intrepid hero visitors

 

What a hell of an itinerary, proper job Ced

 

Proper job mate

Top work all round. Well done everybody - beer, rest and modelling the order of the day

[perdu]

Nice boot, buster...

[Stew Dapple]

24 minutes ago, perdu said:

Nice boot, buster...

 

It is adequately sized, innit? Don't know what he was so sensitive about  

 

Well done Ced, a masterclass in logistics  

 

Safe journey lads  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Procopius]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:14 PM, perdu said:

PC has I see a few helicopters with which to develop 'the taste' (rest free Edward, I will be happy to help if I can...)

In truth I love helos and have a fair few kits in the stash; I'm hoping to find some decals to do my newly-bought Sycamore as a Suez Crisis one, as Suez, Malayan Emergency, and Confrontation helos are all areas of interest for me. Though seeing the Merlins at Yeovilton...phwoar!

 

10 hours ago, hairystick said:

Going by the photos, I suspect the airline that they fly back with will need to attach a trailer, for all the extra baggage!😃

No, but they probably need an extra big pocket to hold all the money they extracted from me for the second checked bag, the so-and-sos. Total weight of checked baggage was 37 kilogrammes, and then there were the two (flagrantly out of limits) pieces of carry on luggage I brought aboard. Happily, this aircraft is very lightly loaded, and JD and I once again have a three seat row split between the two of us, so I have plenty of legroom by the standards of a coach-flying peasant. Incidentally, the pilot lead off with an announcement telling us specifically only to use the lavatories for our class, which just goes to show how little having a republic actually solves in that line.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I think I speak for many when I say that I await the epic diorama build of Castle Bromwich roundabout with scarcely ‘bated breath.

 

A great trip; you’ve seen a couple of Museums that I have yet to visit, and I’ve lived here on & off for almost 60 years.  Loud and prolonged applause to @CedB, who has contributed well beyond the call of duty.

 

Twas a real pleasure to meet you, chaps.  Come again!

[Harley John]

Safe trip lads. What a fantastic travelogue this has been at times sad & poignant and others happy & uplifting. I for one have enjoyed reading of your adventures and though I've been to some of the places you visited you've whetted my appetite to visit some new places although I may swerve the soap dodging hordes of Telford until such time as my sense of smell gives out!

Ced and everyone else that met up & aided our American friends on their trip, thank you for your time & effort.

 

I'm not sure I'd want to be there when the good Lady PC finds out just how much PC's stash has grown!

 

Thank you one and all.

[Procopius]

5 minutes ago, Harley John said:

I'm not sure I'd want to be there when the good Lady PC finds out just how much PC's stash has grown!

In my absence she bought a new house on contingency that costs nearly three times what our current one did, so she doesn't have a lot of searoom on this one.

[Harley John]

Ouch!!!!!!

[stevehnz]

Well done @CedB for shepherding these guys about. I'm happy to say I have visited most of the museums that you have, albeit not in such splendid company. It has been a pleasure to meet you all & to  have shared your adventures at this great distance, I'll just keep reminding myself, I AM NOT BLOODY ENVIOUS.

Steve. 

[Procopius]

1 minute ago, stevehnz said:

Well done @CedB for shepherding these guys about. I'm happy to say I have visited most of the museums that you have, albeit not in such splendid company. It has been a pleasure to meet you all & to  have shared your adventures at this great distance, I'll just keep reminding myself, I AM NOT BLOODY ENVIOUS.

Steve. 

Duxford Battle of Britain Airshow, 2025. Put it in your date book, fellas. 

[stevehnz]

1 minute ago, Procopius said:

Duxford Battle of Britain Airshow, 2025. Put it in your date book, fellas. 

You're on.

Steve.

[Jonny]

Thankyou, Ced, for hosting / looking after our North American friends.

 

I had hoped to meet you all at Duxford on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, life matters got in the way and I couldn’t get there.

I hope PC pens one of his very well written accounts of the trip.  I really wanted to meet him in person to thank him for his always beautifully crafted accounts of progress with his current model(s) with the occasional snippet of family / everyday news.  OK, perhaps not this year but possibly another.

 

Thanks again, best wishes to PC, NavyBird, & Cookie, and a safe arrival home in the USA.

 

Jonny

[Terry1954]

26 minutes ago, Procopius said:

Duxford Battle of Britain Airshow, 2025. Put it in your date book, fellas. 

That sounds like a plan. It's in the diary!

 

Terry

[Mr T]

I bet CeD is ready for a lie down now, that is one hell of an itinerary and I certainly could not have kept up even pre illness. Thank you all for you very informative and illuminating journal of your visit and safe journeys to your homes and loved ones. 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Safe travels to PC and @Cookenbacher I will see you guys on Saturday morning. Looking forward to the good food and conversation. A great thanks to @CedB for being a gratious host to two Americans for the Length and Breadth of the U.K.. 

 

Dennis

[Procopius]

So I can't get Flickr to load on this cruddy airplane wifi -- you can well imagine my dismay that a technology of which I understand so little that it might as well be magic fails to cater to my every whim as I I fly home at twice the ceiling and three times the cruising speed of a Lancaster in pressurized comfort -- but I'll try to summarize the rest of the trip as best I can for you all right now, because I'm probably not gonna have a ton of spare time once I get home and we have to make our house look like somewhere a person might want to live in. Also I paid for this wifi and if I don't do this I'll browse Hannants, and therein lies deadly danger. No photos for now, but think, when we talk of horses, that you see their proud hooves etc.

 

So where was I? Oh right. Sunday. On Sunday we made our way to Cosford, where University Air Squadron (I presume) Tutors lazily did circuits and bumps and caused me to google "1/72 Grob Tutor" about six times before I realized the results were always going to be the same. (It turns out there is a 1/72 Jetstream T.1 though, oh dear oh dear.) We were joined once again by Stew, Jamie, and JasonC, who kindly but foolishly mentioned that he could drive home with some of my Telford haul to Bath, as he lives reasonably close to Ced. Boys throw stones in jest, but the frogs die in earnest, and thus in this innocent, well-meaning comment did we find a solution to the T-Roc's totally adequate storage situation. Possibly Cosford's entire existence could be justified by the following exchange:

 

Me: An Me 262! It's much bigger than I expected.

Stew: And the [30mm] cannon ports are much smaller than I imagined. But it's very cold at high altitude.

 

After Cosford, we retired to the stately fastness of our inn, which was recommended to us by 06/24. Ced quite liked it, feeling it had a traditional English charm, and that may be so. I was unimpressed, however. The Premier Inn may not exactly offer all of the comforts of home, but it offers that certain level of ruthless, unsentimental efficiency that means that the toilet works (Cookie's didn't) or that, with a modicum of patience, one might enjoy a hot shower or reasonable facsimile thereof. (Incidentally, though I'm not unprepared for it after three visits to the country, the single pane of glass covering only half the length of the shower leaves me feeling hideously exposed; I keep expecting a frigate to appear out of the steam broadside on and cross my T, a very vulnerable feeling whilst trying to wash one's hair.) I also note that in the Premier Inn, they don't typically "run out" of beefburgers, nor do they take an hour to even give you a menu before requiring a further hour to prepare one's food. Lastly, the room numbering scheme was unencumbered by any traditional system of numeration I was aware of, so that Cookie's room (18) was adjacent to mine (24), and Bill's (26) was an entire floor up, with the sign indicating its direction pointing in the wrong way. Oh what fun we had trying to find it! I'll grant that it was very beautiful, however, but since I can't load Flickr at 40,000 feet, you'll have to take my word for it.

 

Anyway, that evening, we met up with Heather and her partner (who's a fascinating guy in his own right) that night for a pleasant little dinner, and then it was off to bed.

 

The next day, we were back at Cosford to see the aircraft being restored (Ced had graciously purchased tickets for us in advance), and we had a gander at a Wellington in her underthings, the beautifully restored fuselage of a Hampden (and I learned the "p" is silent, after enunciating it like a simpleton for days), a Lysander III(SD) up on her pins, the ruins of the Dornier 17 they fished out of the water a few years back (which I can't believe will ever be much further restored, given the intense-looking level of deterioration), and an Me410, but as there was a large queue to see inside the cockpit, I more or less gave it a miss.

 

Then we were off again, to Duxford, which we reached just before closing. Bill and Ced went off on their doomed quest to gain good photos of the inside of a Javelin's cockpit, and JD and I opted to fork over ten quid each to listen to a talk about the Lancaster with the promise of a tour of it immediately following. 

 

I will stop right here and say I'm not overly a fan of "that guy", the one who interrupts a talk to add a bit of minor minutia, but during the talk, I discovered that I am, to my horror, in fact that guy. The speaker (who was clearly well-informed and passionate about the Lancaster, to his credit) first said the Zeppelin raids on England were the first time that British civilians had directly been attacked on English soil since the English Civil War (in fact, the 1915 German naval bombardments of coastal towns hold that dubious distinction), and then latterly that the Lancaster had never possessed a ventral turret (it did initially, even in squadron service, but the FN64 was not a success). I felt like a total heel, but Duxford had its revenge. Our "tour" of the Lancaster consisted of getting to stand just inside the crew entryway on a little metal platform placed their specially for our presence, but we were permitted to go no further. Thus ended my dream of wriggling into as many bomb-aimers' positions as possible during my time in England.

 

By the time the talk had ended, Duxford was closing for the day, so we retired to the comforting sameness of the local Premiere Inn to deposit our bags, and from thence we headed out to The Eagle, where we had a very serviceable dinner (the absence of bangers and mash from American menus is one of many currently ongoing national scandals) and Cookie fell in love at first sight with a woman eating outside in the smoking area whom he glimpsed through the window. (All women who are not Mrs P look like rotting meat to me, which can make the supermarket tricky, so I can't vouch for or against JD's evaluation.) Alas, she was with a man who appeared to be her partner, and they seemed pretty happy, but rest assured that if that blaggard had left her sobbing, alone at the table, a ruggedly handsome American engineer stood ready to drop seamlessly into her life. She'll never know what she missed out on, and perhaps that's just as well, less she cast herself into the nearest river, mad with grief at what could, nay should, have been.

 

After dinner, we headed into The Eagle section of the pub proper, adorned with countless unit zaps along the walls, and more importantly, on the ceiling, graffiti left by Allied aircrew during the second world war, burnt into it with lighters or matches or candles, or crudely drawn with lipstick or whatever else was at hand. It being Remembrance Day proper, we drank a toast to the actors waiting in the wings of Europe.

 

Burning the ceiling with a match is the sort of foolish thing a twenty-year-old boy with no time left in which to become a man might well do before heading back to one of the bomber stations to face the fear of death along with six other young men in a metal container at eighteen thousand feet during the years in which he was supposed to feel invincible. It's a very human thing, to be juvenile, and a reminder of really, how horribly young and immature so many of them were. And yet they poured their lives out like so many glasses of water to save the world. 

 

We went back to Duxford the next day to give it the full twice-over, meandering from hangar to hangar and discovering, almost entirely by chance, a rather nice used bookshop that supports the preservation of the airliners hosted on the site. It had an incredible selection, but my now intensely limited storage space meant that I only bought one wafer-thin volume (and dropped a few pound coins in the donation box to support their efforts), and then we were off home, as it were, to Bath. 

 

Back in Bath, I was introduced to the wonders of toad in the hole at Ced's local, and thus encumbered, we staggered back and lapsed into blissful slumber.

 

The following day, it was off to meet up with Terry1954 and another fellow modeller at Yeovilton, where we were treated to the sight of both Wildcats and Merlins warming up on the tarmac and flying about. The EH101 is a magnificent beast of a helicopter, and I'm glad I have a couple in the stash. As if that weren't enough, a lone Sea Fury tooled by overhead as well.  Inside the museum, I managed to get trapped in the Ark Royal tour they have and had to go through the whole thing while everyone else was off looking at airplanes, and I'm here to tell you, the Royal Navy has managed to produce an incredible commercial for a ship that left service in 1978. The aircraft on display, however, were excellent, as well as largely not roped off, meaning one could look at most from all angles, including directly underneath, which I've decided is something I highly value in a museum. 

 

After the museum we opted to head to the Frome(?) model shop that was nearish by, and discovered the plastic model section was closed off until the 16th as they recuperated from Telford. When asked if we'd come far to see the shop, we somewhat disingenuously replied, with our broadest American accents, that we'd come 4,000 miles. They duly opened up the area, and it was a win for everyone, since we all felt obligated to buy something. Ced got a Valom Buckmaster (he can't help himself when Bristols are about), Navy Bird got a Fine Molds A7M Reppu, Cookie got an Azur Mystere, having seen what felt like an endless procession of them over the past two weeks, Terry got a Fine Molds F-14A, and I bought the Fine Molds F-14 missile set, plus a few more presents for my boys, who I've been away from for long enough to have forgotten how poorly behaved they are. Then it was back to Bath, where like any young, vigorous man with his entire life before him, I immediately fell asleep for a two-hour nap. Then we met up with JasonC to retrieve my kits that he'd been very kindly holding for me, and then he joined us at the pub for dinner, where he proved a delightful dinner companion before he was finally able to make his escape. During dinner I learned that Mrs P had bought a house, sort of, depending on whether or not we can sell ours in the next thirty days, which should be interesting.

 

Then it was today, and time to leave. I woke up this morning to a strange rustling emanating from the bathroom, but didn't realize that Ced was in the crawlspace until he suddenly emerged from it with a carryon bag for me to use, moments before I was about to disrobe for the shower. A lucky escape for Ced! After some last-minute packing, everything was squeeeeeeeezed into my four(!) bags, including two carry-ons, we enjoyed one last delicious breakfast made by Ced's very patient wife, and then it was off to Heathrow.

 

On the way, we stopped at the RAF Memorial at Runnymede, which was deeply moving, but also deeply upsetting. A team of people from the CWGC were there adjusting signage, but they were joking and laughing loudly among themselves in a manner that I found very disruptive. I don't begrudge anyone a little camaraderie or fun on the job, even gravediggers have to laugh sometimes, but the Memorial is in effect a sepulcher for 20,000 men who'll never have one of their own. Heaven forbid someone visiting to see the name of a parent, or a sibling, or a relative they'd never meet would have that solemn moment interrupted by loud shrieks of laughter. Most unfortunate. The monument itself, at least, was beautiful and I felt fitting, overlooking as it does Heathrow. 

 

Then it was time to say our goodbyes. Ced, who planned and organized two weeks beyond compare or imagination with aplomb, and who'd tirelessly ferried us all well over a thousand miles, dropped us off at the airport. Navy Bird headed off to the Virgin terminal. Cookie and I to American's. By the time the jet took off, it was dark out, and as it turned to head towards the country I live in for the foreseeable future, ten thousand feet below us, the lights of London were spread out underneath the aircraft, a glittering tapestry seemingly without end.

 

See you all again soon, I hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stew Dapple]

7 hours ago, Procopius said:

See you all again soon, I hope.

 

I'm sure I speak for everyone you met up with when I say it's entirely mutual Edward. Glad I finally got to meet you, Cookie and Navy Bird Bill, I had pretty high expectations and you all surpassed them  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[rob85]

Well that was a lovely read Edward! Very funny as well! 
 

the Grobs my have been the air experience flight, I am sure it is they that I flew with as a kid in the ATC. I think I flew from cosford about 4 times while with them.... but only got round to visiting the museum in my 30’s! 
 

I hope all goes well with the house! Congratulations, nothing like getting hit be a house move after two weeks away. 
 

hope the little guys like the bits you got them.

 

Rob