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I wasn't sure what to do for the Vulcan Tour weekend.
Initial thoughts were to take a Jeep to the aircraft museum and watch the
Vulcan there. However, due to the number of public they expected, I wasn't
going to be able to get the Jeep in. Instead I thought about just popping down
in the Jeep, and parking on the grass corner of the main road junction. Later
on Friday, since I was on my own for the weekend, I hatched a wild plan to see
the Vulcan at Sunderland and at Duxford in Cambridge, driving South early
Sunday morning. As it turned out, I was offered overnight accomodation with a
friend near Duxford, so planned to head South soon after the Vulcan displayed
in Sunderland.
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I set off with about half an hour to spare before the
display. Lots more people decided to park on the main road too, and upon
arriving about 15 minutes before the Vulcan was due, there were cars
everywhere. Fortunately, being in the GPW, I was able to park in the rough
overgrown area where others didn't want to take cars. Even the Fire Brigade
turned up in a Fire truck and parked on the grass.
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Local Vulcan XL319 was just visible from the road, but
due to the nature of the site, with a tall hangar and trees all around, the
site itself wasn't going to give a good view of the display. The Vulcan was
slightly ahead of time, appearing at 13:39 from the South West, and passing
very close to the road, before turning away from the museum over farmland to
the North.
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The Vulcan continued its orbit to the left over the
farmland again, and then back for another pass over the road. Here I caught a
picture of it over 'Hope', parked on the far side of the road. From there,
another left hand power on climbing turn, sideslipping down and round into a
left orbit again.
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After the sideslip orbit, the Vulcan passed over the
road one more time, climbing out to the South East past the museum, before
turning East for the coast where it would then fly North to Scotland.
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It took several minutes for the volume of leaving
traffic leaving the road to clear, before I could cross back over the road to
the Jeep. Even then, I wasn't going to get back out of the junction, and had
to take a longer back route home. Once home, I put the Jeep away and started
packing, heading South around 4pm.
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