Our Day Out At Coningsby

I was recently invited to arrange a trip down to the RAF Base at Coningsby in Lincolnshire by my friend Andrew, who is a member of the club, unfortunately Andrew lives in Skegness, and so is a bit out of the way to join in many of our rides. Andrew works at Coningsby on the team who re-fuel all the aircraft, Coningsby is the base that is home to the Battle of Britain Flight,   

Anyway I put an invite out to any member who wished to come to get in touch, I immediately had a great response from eleven bikes (and a car) Gary Collett from Beckton in London couldn’t come on his bike (tyre problem !!). We met at Ferrybridge Services on the A1
And rode down as a group, with our leader being Derek
who some years ago was stationed at Coningsby, and knew exactly where to go. (Bit of nostalgia for Derek ) Following Andrews instructions we arrived at the visitors centre around 11am, for an official tour of the Battle of Britain Planes, which was very interesting, lasting over the hour.

After the tour, Andrew came and escorted us over to another hanger, to be met by an RAF engineer named Rob, who had offered, (in his own time), to show us round, now try and imagine walking into this huge hanger, in which sat three Typhoons, the latest high tech’ planes in the RAF valued at 80 million each.
Rob took us 4 at a time, up steps at the side of the cockpit of one of the Typhoons, and explained (in simple English) how these amazing planes work.
He then went round the plane at ground level
As he was talking on the ground, another one was brought in for maintenance work, I know all the guy’s in our group enjoyed the experience, and were very grateful to Rob for his effort.

Unfortunately a couple of the guy’s had to leave us at this point, Andrew then suggested we pop down to the 
local village for a brew……And then come to the Gate-House with the bikes. He took me into the gate-house for a security pass to cover all the 8 bikes, and in we rode. We went round following Andrew in his van to the end of one of the runways where they were setting up a photo shoot with a number of RAF personnel,in front of three planes Typhoon/ Tornado/ Hurricane .Andrew had a word with the guy’s, and called us over. The RAF photographer suggested the best way to line the bikes up, he kindly took his pic, then we took our own. (naughty)

We then said our thank you’s to the guy’s and especially Andrew, for a fabulous day, and made our way home (the pretty way) The following morning I had a call from Andrew who had been called in by the officer in charge at the camp, to explain how he had managed to get all our bikes on camp !!! He explained (shaking) that he had gone through channels and got security clearance, his main problem was the fact that we took our own photo’s, which, because of copyright is a no-no
and needed to make sure none of the pic’s would be published in a mag or on a web-site.
I phoned each of the guy’s straight away to explain the problem, and so the only photo we are allowed to show is the official one, taken by their photographer, which is brilliant (sorry they aren’t all Pans he he)

Once again I would like to thank all the guy’s who came and made it a great day out which I will always remember, and obviously a special thanks to Andrew for organising the day !!!