Orford Ness and Shuttleworth

It is airshow time in England - Harry started putting the dates into the calendar a long time ago, and I started looking around for other things to do while he looks at aircraft all day!!! We make quite a team! So, when I saw on our calendar 'Shuttleworth' 1 June, I looked at my book on Coastal Walks (I recently bought this book and as there are heaps of walks all around the English coastline I thought it would be a good goal to do as many as possible). Anyway, about an hours drive from Shuttleworth I discovered there was a place called Orford Ness (nothing like where the Lockness Monster lives). So Saturday morning we took off early, laden with our picnic lunch and tootled along the motorway for about 3 and a bit hours (lots of people say 'It's a long way' when we discuss where we are going each weekend but we have decided we save our carbon footprint for the weekends by cycling to work during the week and since our car is little and quite fuel efficient we can be forgiven). Before taking a boat trip over to the Ness (a long shingle spit which changes shape on a regular basis depending on the tide and the weather) we drove past Orford Castle (built by Henry II), and wandered around the shoreline of Orford a sleepy little fishing village. The little boat took us a distance which we could have swum easily (but the muddy waters didn't look very inviting) and so we ventured forth. We were hoping to see some wildlife over on the Ness but as it is breeding season many of the walks were closed (which in principle was fine) but as a consequence we saw lots of sea gulls and no other wild life except for a number of little hairy gold and black caterpillars that tried to climb up our trouser legs as we ate our lunch. But all was not lost as the 7 kilometre walk took us through some pretty interesting historical sites. The Ness is on the east coast and in one of its previous lives it served as an airfield during the Second World War, (The National Trust are allowing the site to revert back to nature except for a few buildings that serve the information centre, museum, light house etc). The airfield is now a marshy land and the buildings are gradually becoming overgrown (they reckon that back in the 1100’s Henry II may have been the first to drain the marshes. Most of the buildings are protected by quite a high sea wall, some built by prisoners of war. So, this was the site where lots of secret cold war military testing occurred (where drop testing of atomic bombs were completed in 1956 ie bombs were subjected to very high accelerations and collisions to see what would happen), a prisoner of war camp, the place where Robert Watson-Watt developed radar, a training ground for young lighthouse keepers (their cottages were at the beach, together with a coastguard building which they hope to renovate - a desolate beach, exposed and pebbly and as the sea mist rolled in we could imagine the bleakness of the site for families living there). We passed a bomb ballistics building which was described as the ‘nerve centre of the new experimental bombing range' back in 1933. On our ride back to the mainland we met the great grand daughter of the guy Hanmer Springs was named after. She talked of driving from Christchurch to Auckland back in the 1980's and how the roads were so exciting as you never knew what was around the corner (I could just picture her driving down Ngauranga Gorge with Wellington coming into view for the first time). We had mused on the way over, that the English countryside lent itself to motorways as there was no need for bridges, tunnels, excavations around sides of the hills and reclaiming of land. However, they do still destroy the habitat of wildlife and there must be a limit to roads criss crossing each other on the landscape so I guess it is better to have less cars than more roads. Anyway, with all that surmising we took off for the Cotswolds and drove through a number of cute little villages and thatched cottages (just like all those photos in calendars that hang on our walls) while looking for a bed and breakfast. We passed one which only took people for 2 nights (I suspect they would have taken us if we drove a BMW rather than a little yellow citroen saxo) and after asking at a couple of hotels (the girl from Matamata on reception at one was very helpful but couldn't find us a bed because there was a national kite festival on) we eventually found a hotel in a place called Sandy only a few kilometres from Shuttleworth. I was resigning myself to sleeping under the stars (our NZ bought sleeping bags are always in the car for such an occasion) and I was a bit disappointed when we found a bed (not so disappointed in the morning when we realised it had rained quite heavily over night).

It seemed quite fitting that within walking distance of the Shuttleworth Collection (aircraft) there was a bird of prey refuge centre. So, as Harry looked at man's attempt to emulate birds I went off to visit the real thing!! But here's the aircraft story first... As a collection Harry was impressed with the standard of aircraft, and did see some that he had not seen before - the airshow was a small one (a bit like the ones at Masterton) and we could park our car close by and munch our sandwiches and sup our tea while still being close to the air show (the picnics were quite amazing, chairs and tables pulled out of cars, tea pots and their cosy's - while we sat on a blanket on muddy grass!!). So, after taking 263 photos here is the pick of the bunch with a little bit of a narrative for those who don't know much about these flying (I am probably at the top of that list).

• Sopwith Triplane - this is often known as DIXIE, due to its colour scheme, which replicates aircraft N 6290, that flew with No 8 Squadron Royal Naval Air Service
• The four German trainers were 1932 Focke Wulf FW 44 Stieglitz, 1935 Bucker Jungmann, 1938 Klemn 35D, 1940 Bucker BU 1818 Bestmann
• The Gladiator was the last in the line of inter-war Gloster fighters, following the Grebe, Gamecock and Gauntlet, and was also the last biplane fighter used by the RAF and first flew in 1934. It was soon ordered into production by the Air Ministry as the Gladiator, and became the first RAF fighter to have four Browning machine guns and had flaps and an enclosed cockpit.
• The Lysander was painted black and fitted with a long-range fuel tank beneath the fuselage and a ladder fixed to the side of the aircraft to allow the agents to enter and exit quickly. It's claim to fame is as a 'spy taxi', picking up and dropping secret agents behind enemy lines.
• The Hux starters didn't fly but were 3 model T Fords that were used to start the engines of airplanes in the 1930's. Previous to this men would swing on the propellor to turn it but the more powerful engines required a bit more oomph. So, the Huxes took over.
• The Collection's Blackburn monoplane was the seventh Mercury monoplane built. It was built in October 1912 to the order of Cyril Foggin, who learnt to fly at the Blackburn School at Hendon. It first flew in December 1912 in the hands of Harold Blackburn and was demonstrated by the company during the first part of 1913.
• The Bristol boxkite (even to my untrained eye this was a cool aircraft) is a full scale replica of the original and was built originally for the movie (Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines) as was the next aircraft.
• The Avro Triplane is a replica built by the Hampshire Aeroplane Club at Eastleigh, Southampton for the famous movie. After the making of the film the Trustees decided to add it to their collection and during the winter of 2000 the plan was completely stripped down and restored.
• There were a number of Deperdussin built and these planes had enough power and reliability to be able to make sustained cross-country flights and they were also ideal for training. This one also appeared in "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines"

And for those of you who haven't had enough of aircraft Harry would like you to know this is only the beginning there is RIAT and Farnborough to come (now what can I do????)

I did have a little look at the aircraft flying (and listened to the band playing), but the birds of prey caught my imagination and I spent considerable time there watching them fly or looking at me from their perches. Between the airfield and the birds was a little Swiss garden which I wandered through a few times - quite pretty but not quite at its best as the daffodils had long finished and many of the other flowers and trees were just budding. Plenty of purple rhododendrons, and a few red and orange ones as well. Harry also managed to walk through the garden before the show started and managed to take a tumble on a little bridge that has probably added to his other very big, deep purple bruise he managed to collect during the week when a car got a bit close to his back wheel. Thankfully besides the bruise the only damage was that which money can fix. A little reminder about how vulnerable we are, whatever we are doing.


I saw a range of owls, falcons, vultures (and also some little moreporks from New Zealand). The barn own – tu whit tu whoos but as it gets older only the male whoos and the female whits (or is it the other way around?). Anyway, this little owl reared from birth at the refuge is a bit confused as it whoo's in the morning and whitt's in the evening (or is it the other way around?). Owls have black eyes, orange eyes or yellow eyes depending on whether they are nocturnal, mainly dawn and dusk, or daytime hunters respectively. They can turn their necks 270 degrees as they have extra vertebrae in the neck, contrary to a popular opinion that they can turn it right round (it would come off!!). Vultures and falcons have such acute eyesight they can see a mouse in a field 100 metres away. But all these birds are born lazy - they move when food is around and only attach themselves to humans when they get fed. So, getting them to fly means putting bits of food strategically on poles. Many of these birds are still declining in numbers despite the efforts of conservationists. In England, it is about the growing population being housed in the country with the result of less bush for them to nest and live in and less rodents for them to catch. The little barn owl (or ghost owl cos it is white in most places) has reduced from 6000 barn to about 3000 in just 2 years.
There are more floods in England - some families have been flooded 5 or 6 times during the last 2 years, but before that completely dry. Some places, they reckon it is drains that have not been kept up to standard and in the recent one where a months rain fell in 2 hours, they think it has to do with the inadequacy of the Thames pumping station. With the population growing and more housing being built in flood prone areas it seems that the councils need to get their act together. These people have homes that can't be insured, or are insured with premiums rising at a rapid rate, and some have not been able to live in their house for six months only to have to leave the next week because of another downpour. Must be very distressing. Bristol, does seem to miss the worst rain and since we are on a hill we remain dry. Besides, house prices falling, petrol increasing and one council asking the public to empty their bins as they are too heavy for the men that are paid to empty them (???) that's the news from England for this week.