Duxford and Pseudo-Cambridge

Our Great British Adventure

May 7, 2018

We kept heading south, arriving at Duxford and the Imperial War Museum about 1pm. This is a huge site full of aviation history. Because it was the Bank Holiday Monday, they had some of their older planes, like Spitfires, up in the air and I had fun photographing them.

There are lots of huge hangars, each with a theme. We headed to the first one, which had the original Concorde - the one used to test its flight characteristics - on display. Even better, it was open for a walk-through. Also open for a walkthrough is one of the two last remaining Comets (though the 4th gen, with rounded windows. The first generation had huge square picture windows, which caused terrible crashes when they fell apart from metal fatigue at the corners. The industry learned a lot, but the Comet's reputation never really recovered).

After a couple of enjoyable hours exploring just a fraction of the site, we had a late lunch and headed off again. I'd chosen Cambridge with the vague thought of us having a quick explore in the evening, but hadn't looked too closely at the address. It turned out that the hotel was at one of the motorway service centres. That meant lots of excellent options for dinner, but no exploring Cambridge (or even seeing it for that matter). Oddly enough, given the location, we had a view of lawn (complete with a grazing rabbit which bemused us both) and a tree with an incredibly melodic bird.