Under my um-ba-rella ella ella

LT 14 July London

We woke to a dreary Saturday in London – no surprises there - so were wondering how that would impact on our Farnborough experience.  We’d rearranged our original intentions for the morning to incorporate the hotel breakfast which the kids had been looking forward to, but which didn’t start until 8am!  I guess they think everyone is a bit more leisurely in the weekend.  Breakfast was as good as we’d hoped, and in any case our train connections to Farnborough were very tidy and we arrived in plenty of time. 

The organisation for the event was amazing.  As we got off the train at Farnborough station there were guides in hi-viz vests directing people in the general direction of a queue of double-decker shuttle buses.  Families were directed down a separate queue for the children to get on identification bracelets, complete with a parent’s mobile phone number and a little tear-off part so that, if we did lose a child, we would need to produce the matching part in order to claim them back!  Darn there goes the plan to farm them out J

The shuttle buses ran constantly, and we waited less than 5 minutes before our bus was full and off to the show.  Despite the long queue at the entrance gate, people with megaphones encouraged us to line up 6-across, so it moved pretty quickly.  We very quickly found ourselves inside the show proper, and also shortly afterwards running to find shelter from a rather heavy rain-shower.  Unfortunately our Paris-bought umbrellas were not as large or as effective as we had hoped and we sat out not quite enough of the rain inside the Virgin Galactic display tent/room/arena.  It was an unfortunate way to start the show really, as it did put rather a “dampener” on the day.

The show itself was fabulous – lots of air-show type things, hmm maybe the man should be writing this one.  Static displays, flying displays (all afternoon), business and commercial displays, stalls from interest groups and lots of places to tempt your pounds out of your pocket.  It was a good ten minutes’ walk from the entry gate down to the grandstand which we’d bought tickets to in the hope that it would provide both a seat for tired legs and a good viewing angle for the flying displays.  On both counts it came through and we can recommend the grandstand to any future Farnborough fans.  I can also recommend sitting in the front couple of rows, ahead of all the people who won’t put their umbrella down even when it is either in the lap or in front of the face of the person behind.

But back to the show!  All afternoon there were flying displays from a range of aircraft, from an Airbus A380, an Apache helicopter, a Typhoon, a Lancaster bomber and Spitfire (and others), as well as several aerobatics groups doing impressive formation and trick flying stunts.  The pilot flying the Airbus must have been having a ball, as I’m sure he never gets to fly that aircraft that way at any other time.  The displays were very cool and really impressive, even though most aircraft had to do their “flat display” because of the low cloud.  The weather did clear gradually and it ended up fairly dry late in the day.

Not long after our drenching we bought a family set of those awesome rubbish bag type poncho emergency raincoats.  They were moderately effective, but rather too late to save us.  By mid afternoon the cold and wet had soaked through Katriel’s fun side, so the girls hit the road and left the boys to see out the displays to their hearts’ content.  I had a brief few moments of concern at the train station where we had to change trains – 12 platforms, and no signs pointing to Teddington, and no ticket office in sight to ask – but with a bit of girl power we found a train and were back at our hotel changing into dry socks in about an hour.  The boys followed a few hours later and were equally keen on finding dry socks when they came in.

It’s strange to be all but finished our big adventure.  Peter and Caelan are very reluctant to return, having enjoyed the freedom from work and study pressure. Katriel on the other hand is so so excited about going home – for the last few days she has been counting the days.  She’s keen to be back home and back into routine and to see all her friends again.  Alyssa and I are both somewhere in the middle.  Alyssa is keen to see friends and cousins, and I’m looking forward to the sameness and even ‘boringness’ of home and staying in one place for a while.  At the same time it’s been such a huge adventure and amazing experience, it’s hard to conceive of going back to ‘normal’ life.