Yorkshire Air Museum

Yorkshire Air Museum

Ideal weather for our visit to the Allied Air Forces Memorial & Yorkshire Air Museum. Ron, our host, had kindly agreed to drop us off at the museum which is just a couple of miles away from the Hundred Oaks Caravan Site in Elvington. He was ready bang on time and we were soon on our way in his Range Rover, how lucky we are! Ron’s a really nice bloke, very friendly, has obviously worked very hard all his life and is now reaping his well deserved rewards.

The air museum was excellent, lovely atmosphere and you could really get a feel for what it was like in these places during WW2 when Elvington was a very active heavy bomber base. The main reason I had wanted to visit this place was because I knew from previous research that it housed one of only two Handley Page Halifax heavy bombers, the other one being in Canada I believe.

My stepfather, Eric Dunton, had been in the RAF during WW2 and had been a rear gunner (Tail End Charlie) in a Halifax, quite how he survived I cannot really imagine. At that time the average life expectancy for a rear gunner was two weeks but somehow he did survive many missions over enemy territory, a miracle really.

Unfortunately as luck would have it the Air Gunner section of the museum was closed for renovations but several other exhibits showed me the things I really wanted to see. I was frankly shocked and quite emotional when I saw for real a rear gun turret from a heavy bomber. The conditions, the exposure and the sheer terror these men must have experienced really shook me. They were alone in the turret, surrounded really by just a glass bubble in freezing temperatures with four machine guns for company which were fed ammunition by belts further forward in the tail. I honestly cannot imagine how these men managed to do what they did, truly humbling.

Rear Gunner

The Halifax Heavy Bomber was everything I had hoped it would be. It was staggering to learn that on the production lines where they were built at the peak of production there was one plane PER HOUR coming off the production line, such was the attrition rate of planes and air crew. This rate of loss really puts modern day warfare into perspective, again I was shocked.

There were many fascinating aspects to the exhibits, we particularly enjoyed the control tower and seeing the living conditions of the air crew. It’s extraordinary to realise that these men might be being shot at and killed over enemy territory at one moment and then several hours later, if they had been lucky, they might be back in an English village in the village pub, mentally how do you live like that?

A really unexpected bonus towards the end of our visit was a wooden contraption in a corner of one of the huts, I thought I knew what it was and I was right. It was the original wooden “catapult” that Barnes Wallace had used for his tests with ball bearings in a water tank when he was inventing and designing the “bouncing bomb” used during the famous WW2 Dambusters raid. Just brilliant to see an artefact like that survive with all the history that it essentially created.

This place really has been well worth the visit, it was excellent. Ron picked us up and we were soon back at the site for a leisurely late afternoon and evening. Nice walk up into the village of Newton Upon Derwent. Made a few new discoveries about the motorhome, a couple of features I didn’t even know existed but all good!

Another Airline Rip-Off

It’s the little sneaky things that annoy me when prices go up, much more than the bigger obvious things.

We’ve always quite enjoyed flying with Jet2 to Mallorca and have had no major problems. On our early outward flight instead of messing about with breakfast we have generally enjoyed a toasted ham and cheese sandwich which used to come with a “free” packet of crisps.

In the last 12 months things have changed in terms of pricing, here are the details:

In April 2017 a toasted ham and cheese sandwich was £3.95p and a “free” packet of crisps was also provided with it so the total cost was £3.95p.

In April 2018 a toasted ham and cheese sandwich on the same route will cost £4.20p and a packet of crisps will no longer be included, it will be available for an additional charge of 30p so the total cost would be £4.50p.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that for the same snack meal this represents an increase in the cost of almost 14% at a time when the current general inflation rate is below 3%.

Thanks for that Jet2, sadly all this does is annoy people and encourage them to not buy things on the plane. The answer is of course simple, if you feel you are being ripped off simply take a snack meal with you which is allowed as long as you are not taking liquids.

This was a few years back, daren’t imagine what the score is now.

Back To The Old Ways

Slow But Unhackable

Over the last few years I’ve started to become pretty sick and tired of a lot of the “modern” ways of doing things.

I just hate telephoning a company and almost invariably not getting through to a person but just having to select from endless lists before finally getting cut off just as I think I’m getting somewhere.

I’m sick and tired of finally contacting an organisation only to find that the person I get through to can’t deal with things, being given a promise that someone will be in touch, only to find that I hear nothing and have to start again.

I’ve had enough of sending emails into the ether to hear nothing for ages and to have to go through the whole procedure again or even worse to have to make that telephone call…. Select option 6….. Sorry, there is nobody available to take your call…

So I decided, where I could, to change things and to write letters. Yes, I type something out, print it, sign it, put it in an envelope with a stamp on it, post it and forget it. I even do this if all I want is the right person to contact me, it shifts the effort from me to “The Company”.

It’s been great, I find that almost invariably the right person gets back to me or the problem is just resolved without further contact and I hear no more. Going back to the old ways has really been a help to me, maybe it’s just the novelty value of people receiving a hand signed letter, who knows, but it’s worth a try.