White Horse Pilgrim

Fine weather and a strange farewell

 

 
We had a lovely Sunday morning for riding. It was the sort of day that invites one to take advantage of it, knowing intuitively that damp grey winter is almost upon us. K came with me, and our horses were energetic. The two beasts seem to get on well, and compete just enough for some nice fast canters.

The going is good now after a measure of rain, but not unduly wet or slippery. The deciduous trees are lovely, not quite at their peak of autumnal colour, but attractive nonetheless. The harvested fields lie roan, for ploughing has brought chalk and flints to the surface. It's a good time to be out.

After riding I headed twenty miles north to wait by the military airfield at Brize Norton. It's not often that I have much to do with aeroplanes, though I did train as an aircraft engineer three decades ago. Anyway, this weekend saw the final national tour by the only surviving airworthy Vulcan bomber, XH558. On holiday in Scotland as a child in the late 1970s I saw these machines flying at low altitude on training missions, and very impressive they were. The Vulcan had been in service since 1956, and was thoroughly obsolete by the time that I encountered it, based as it was upon captured German wartime research data. And yet a couple of the final Vulcans in service bombed Port Stanley airfield in 1982, shortly before final withdrawal of the dwindling fleet in 1984.

I parked on the highway verge by the end of Brize Norton's long runway. The final view of XH558 airborne was rather anticlimactic. The big delta-winged beast simply flew by, trailing a thin plume of smoke from its four engines, quieter than I had expected. And then it was gone. The Vulcan is a fantastic piece of engineering, however I drove away feeling a peculiar emotion. I was an aviation enthusiast years ago, and history continues to fascinate me. However the paraphernalia of war no longer exerts much of a draw. The Cold War was a time of fear and bloody peripheral wars, and there is little to be nostalgic about. The free world is endangered again, and there is no glory in this. Courage, there is aplenty, but conflict is a poor breeding ground for virtue. Meanwhile our leaders stumble from one war to another, in their hubristic steps making the world more dangerous. Fascination with the hardware of killing just helps one to sleepwalk into acquiescence with the blind men and women in charge. I'm fascinated no longer.

Sunshine and surprises

It was a day of light, space and quiet. A few hours of colour, contrast and the occasional surprise.

Grass is thick and deep. Flowers are plentiful. Poppies thrive upon the tilled chalk, great patches of vivid red appearing here and there for no particular reason. They burst forth where they will, adding lovely patches of colour.

Not that the summer landscape isn't colourful already, with a whole range of greens from dull or dark to vigorously bright. Then there are the golden fields where the crop has been cut, yellow ragwort, the brown soil and rarer blue flowers.  

Up above wind marshalled the clouds into towering streets, splendid and impressive, running from one horizon to the opposite. Dominating the landscape, clouds put the traveller into perspective: small, uninfluential, a mere observer. 

But there is so much to see. Observing is no hardship. I wandered for hours looking here and there, seeing my friend the land clad in a new seasonal dress, for she must keep up with the latest garb. How different this is to the bleak solstice ride when the rain poured and the wind blew. Yes, truly it's summer at last.

Whilst the athletes labour and strive a hundred miles to the east, here Brena and I ride in peace competing with nobody. 

The sloping expanse of Childrey Warren is smooth and inviting. Old roads unused by farmers for a couple of generations slip across the hillside, slowly being absorbed by the hill.Another two or three generations and they will be gone. Swathes of yellow ragwort stain the green. How I'd love to live down there, tucked away from the world in a silent mile. But no-one lives there, and most probably no-one has in my lifetime. 

An old aeroplane flew over, a DeHavilland Rapide from the 1930s. That was a surprise. There are still a few of these machines flying, and this one has been giving pleasure flights from Oxford airport. It did give me pleasure to see this survivor, lovingly cared for, in the air. Now that is proper flying.  

From the air

I'd like to present a selection of the photographs that Danielle and I took from Peter's helicopter on Christmas morning.

This is the view moments after we left the ground.

 

Here is an old farmhouse within a frozen medieval moat.

 

 

These are fields showing the distinctive signs of ridge and furrow cultivation.

 

Here are earthworks marking the site of Wormleighton, abandoned during the English Civil War of 1642-51.

 

The Oxford Canal which winds about hugging the contours was frozen.

Today's Burton Dassett Country Park was once an ironworking site.

From aloft the country park a view sweeps southwest towards Edge Hill.

Here's Edge Hill, scene of a major Civil War battle, beneath a bright blue sky.

This view sums up the mystery and spaciousness of a snowy English countryside.

After setting us down Peter took off with another three passengers.

 

This trip was a wonderful highlight of the holiday and a great opportunity to see the English countryside from the air. There are so many fascinating features best spotted from above and indeed brought out most clearly by a combination of sharply angled sunlight and snow.

A big thank you to Peter for making this possible.

Aviating

The weekend saw little riding but a good measure of aviation. M and I flew over to an aviation rally in the RV6 that he and L constructed. This is a small fast metal monoplane and rather fun to fly. There were close on a thousand private aeroplanes at the rally, making this (so I was told) the second largest such event worldwide after Oshkosh.

It's a pleasure to get back into flying, albeit gently. The dust of a quarter century is being blown away. This time I took the controls at 50 feet and handed them back to M for the landing. This will all lead somewhere.

The aeroplane in the picture is not the RV6 but instead the Storch owned by M and L's neighbour.

I had the good fortune to be invited for a flight in the Storch, an ex-Luftwaffe machine constructed in the early 1940s. This was extremely generous of the owner, for the Storch is a rare bird indeed and one that burns a gallon of fuel for every two minutes of flight.

Here is the view of M & L's house during take-off. The Storch was designed to take off and land in absurdly small spaces. We left the ground after a take off roll of around a hundred yards and climbed at a steep angle the impression of which was accentuated by the low speed.

The second impression, after the rapid take off and slow steep climb, was the astonishing view offered to the pilot and observer. The large perspex windows allow the occupants to look not just in front and to the sides but also vertically above and below. It is quite curious to be able to look straight down from an aeroplane. Meanwhile we had plenty of time to look about as the Storch cruised at around 70mph.

We circled tightly above a park looking straight down at people who waved up at us. The large Argus V8 engine makes a distinctive throaty roar quite unlike most of the light aeroplanes that fly around nowadays. The Storch can make a complete circle with a radius of about a hundred yards. With the flaps down it can fly very slowly. Indeed this is a machine with quite unusual capabilities and flying characteristics - "a mad aeroplane" according to the owner.

It was odd to fly over the English countryside in a machine bearing Luftwaffe markings. After orbiting the park, we flew over the railway junction at Fenny Compton. One of the Storch's roles used to be forward air control, and I could imagine an observer checking on details below using powerful field glasses. With such a large slow machine one would have wanted to keep out of the range of enemy firearms.

The pilot took my camera for a moment and photographed me in the back seat. You can see just how good a view we had with all that clear perspex around us. The windows on either side of me had been slid open, despite which it wasn't unduly draughty in the cabin though we needed intercom with microphones and headsets to communicate.

The final photo taken from the Storch shows the view as we came into land at a bizarrely slow 40mph. Seconds later the pilot rounded out the Storch so that the nose pointed up. Then the machine settled onto the grass and the long shock-absorbing undercarriage recoiled and spread what looked like a very long way. After a short roll of perhaps 50 yards we had stopped and it was just a short taxi across to the hanger and house.

What a wonderful experience! It was a very special treat to be taken for a flight not just in a seventy year-old aeroplane that is the only airworthy example of its type in this country but in a machine paintakingly restored to its original condition as manufactured. Indeed this is a superb restoration and arguably better than the standard of work likely under wartime conditions.

I shall not forget this flight for a very long time.

Meanwhile it will be back to horses tomorrow.

Stalking a Stork

What with all the distractions, the weekend really was rather a holiday for Doru.

A nice grassy pasture, another horse and goats for company, humans to make a fuss of him, pleasant weather: really Doru's needs were well provided for.

Meanwhile I am easily distracted.

I will run outside if an interesting aeroplane flies overhead. There is a small boy still active inside.

Saturday afternoon began with a Spitfire flying over. That was worth leaving the house to see.

Doru grazed on.

Then I was offered a flight in M & L's private aeroplane with M as instructor, an opportunity too good to refuse.

It's not the first time that I've flown in a small aeroplane. Many years ago I trained as a glider pilot, going on to complete around three hundred solo flights. I completed some twenty hours of training in powered aeroplanes too.

That came to an end when I started to suffer from vertigo. Problems with balance really aren't a good thing for a pilot. Hence that whole episode of life was thrust behind me, and an unlikely alternative course led to working horses in Transylvania.

I was thrilled to find that I could fly again, albeit under supervision, and do so confidently and untroubled by past problems. Indeed I'd not forgotten how to manoevre a small aeroplane (though, like riding a bicycle, the kernel of skill remains within).

This seems like that start of a time of unanticipated growth, as welcome as it is surprising. Flying, driving borrowed cars, taking Doru away by trailer, learning healing techniques from Larynn: each helps me to outgrow the clinging tentacles from past life. This is all so exciting, like being fully alive again at last. Darkness is being excised.

The second photo shows the historic Storch aeroplane that M & L's neighbours flew across.

The Storch is a truly classic old aeroplane. It is also very rare. This example was restored painstakingly at great cost, and is finished to an absolutely superb standard - better even than when it left the factory seven decades ago.

The great trick that this machine can perform sounds quite simple. It can land and take off from very short strips. I've seen eighty feet quoted for the landing run, and two hunded and fifty feet to take off. In a stiff breeze the Storch can rise vertically and hover above a spot on the ground.

In a pre-helicopter era such machines were decidedly useful to the military. Rommel had one for his personal use, and another rescued Mussolini from a very tight spot.

The Storch is cleverly engineered. I won't deviate into a lecture on aerodynamics (that's just a bit remote from horses!), however the technically minded will note the slats in front of the wing leading edge, and the gap between the wing and the Handley Page flaps beyond. Together these things mean that this aeroplane generates a lot of lift at very slow speed.

Nearby Doru grazed on.

Meanwhile I was thrilled to take a close look at this machine and see it demonstrated skillfully.

And then I did go for a nice sedate ride with Doru, over the fields and past the woods, where we relaxed beyond the grasp of technology more complex than a saddler's craft.