Day 51 Woodhall Spa 6 June 2018

In the town of Woodhall Spa they have a memorial to 617 Squadron. You can obviously see they thought of the design carefully, with its representation of the bursting dam wall.

Today, under grey skies, we visited RAF Coningsby, which is an active airbase and given the number of jet engines that hurtled above us, it seemed quite active. Here they have the battle of Britain flight which is maintained by the RAF. They have lots of Hurricanes, Spitfires and one Lancaster. All these aircraft still fly. Our tour guide was 85 but you would not have guessed, he was very good. He told us some interesting stories.

Our guide with a Tall Boy 10 ton bomb.

Next was East Kirkby Aviation Heritage Centre, home of the Lancaster. They have one that they are working on being airworthy. You can go for a taxy ride (that is the correct spelling) for like 325 pounds. As it was, it wasn’t available, not that I think we would have done it.  The displays were impressive given that it is a private organisation. Their presentation needs to be modernised but they have made some good attempts to do so. 

 Here is Eric, one of the Americans (ex-navy) either photographing, worshipping or proposing to the Lancaster, or possibly a combination.

Next was the Thorpe Camp Visitor Centre.  For a voluntary organisation they have done an outstanding job. Originally part of RAF Woodhall Spa, it was abandoned after the war and the buildings were only designed to last 10 years. After the war, they converted them into social housing. This lasted until 1962, and they fell into disrepair with trees growing out of them. In the 1980s the Woodland Fund bought the site and they were going to demolish the buildings. They had some excellent displays for a voluntary group.

In return we explored the grounds of our very picturesque Petwood Hall, which has connections to the Dambusters. This is where the Officers stayed, slept and drank. In our room it would have been
the bedroom of a couple of officers or more. Here is their mess, which is now our restaurant.

The photographs do not do it justice.

For dinner we went to the 13th Century Blue Bell Inn, which was one pub frequented by the bomber crews and they had lots of period memorabilia.