At breakfast we were served with the first proper cup of tea of the weekend. Two individual pots of tea that were brewed to perfection.

Rain was forecast for the day so we headed of to Croome Court, a National Trust property. As we are National Trust members, entrance was free so it didn’t matter if we could only visit the house and not the wider estate.

As we arrived at Croome Court the heavens opened so we donned our waterproofs and hastily made our way to the ticket office entrance. After a brief visit to the shop, we made our way to the house via the church. The route we chose was mostly sheltered by trees so we kept dry. We passed the walled garden on the way, it was probably just as well it is only open at weekends because it wasn’t really the weather for visiting a walled garden.

We toured the house and then had lunch in the basement cafe before making our way to the RAF Defford Museum which is situated near to the entrance office. The weather had cleared up allowing us to see the wonderful vistas and landscaping created by Capability Brown as we walked to the museum. After exploring the military history of Croome we still had time to spare so we headed off to Broadway where I became reaquainted with and old friend, ‘The Hudson Guide’, but that is a story for another day.

Whilst in Broadway Mr C couldn’t resist the temptation of visiting a cook shop and we came away with two colanders. As we made our way back to the car I noticed an ice cream parlour which allowed us both to indulge in a ginger ice cream.

When we arrived back at the hotel we were greeted by the barman who had welcomed us on the first day of our stay. We started to engage in conversation with him but the hotel receptionist of the day interrupted. She was querying the basis of our stay and informing us that we had dinner bed and breakfast booked for two nights of our stay. We had booked on a bed and breakfast basis but had said we would be ‘dining in’ on the first evening. We were advised that we had another meal in the hotel, but we said that we already had made other arrangements, she said she would sort it out for us.

Once back in our room I washed my hair so that I looked more presentable after the day’s rain before we made our way to the final meal of the holiday which was in the L’amuse-Bouche Restaurant. As mentioned in a previous post, before the meal we were served  an Amuse-Bouche. On this occasion it was pork and pickled vegetables presented in a delightful way. I chose Nut and Vegetable stir fry  followed by passion fruit mousse with coconut ice cream. After our meal we returned to Colwall for a brief nightcap. Mr C wanted to return to our room to follow the exit polls for the UK general election on the TV. Luckily for me the TV was in a separate room allowing me to chill and wait for the result in the morning. I had already come to a conclusion on the result and what I had thought came to pass overnight.

Whilst chilling in the bedroom I noticed that the book of menus, emergency phone numbers and breakfast times, etc. had still not been returned to our room…

The inspiration for the Remembrance garden comes form the RAF Association’s Dedication, the last in line of which is “we will remember them”. The central feature of the  50 metre-long garden is the RAF Association emblem – a magnificent stainless steel eagle sitting on top of a globe.  The eagle, named Winston, is made up of over 1,000 hand-forged feathers and is surrounded by a segmented RAF roundel separated into four quarters to depict the RAF Association at the heart of RAF welfare.*

The RAF Association Remembrance Garden will preserve the memory of the serving and ex-serving members of the RAF for many years to come.*

Some shared thoughts:

I visited the National Memorial Arboretum today and the Eagle in the attached photo was quite stunning against the skyline inviting closer inspection. When I got up close I found that it was the centerpiece of Royal Air force Association Memorial Garden.

It is a wonderful piece of artwork, a fitting memorial for those who served in The Royal Air Force. The crosses beneath have been placed there by friends, family and colleagues of those who served. Unfortunately the drizzly weather dulls the shine of the eagle against the sky… I thought you might enjoy it anyway…

*From the National Memorial Arboretum Guidebook Edition 4

The grade II listed Airman’s Cross at Airman’s Corner was moved to a more fitting site as part of the changes to the Stonehenge access.  The memorial is now placed where it is more accessible, where more people will be able to learn about this aspect of local aviation history. The Earl and Countess of Wessex attended the  rededication service of the cross earlier this year.

This cross was erected in memory of two pioneering airmen who were killed in a flying accident near here in 1912. It marks this area as the cradle of British military aviation.

The open grassland around Stonehenge made it particularly suitable for flying early aircraft, and military flying began here in 1911. Within a year the Royal Flying Corps had been created.

Captain Eustace Loraine and Staff Sergeant Richard Wilson were flying a Nieuport monoplane from Larkhill airfield north of Stonehenge, on a routine training flight on 5 July 1912. They were executing a steep turn when, unaccountably, the aircraft crashed. The two men were the first members of the Royal Flying Corps to lose their lives on duty.

Captain Loraine’s enthusiasm for flying was infectious. Only weeks before the accident, he inspired his friend and former commanding officer Hugh Trenchard to learn to fly, which he did shortly after Loraine’s death. Trenchard would go on to command the Royal Flying Corps in France during the First World War and to become the founder of the Royal Air Force in 1918.*

*From a sign board next to the memorial cross.

Hack Green, SECRET nuclear bunker:

In 1941 Hack Green, a site previously used as a bombing decoy site for the main railway centre at Crewe was chosen to become RAF Hack Green, to protect the land between Birmingham and Liverpool from hostile attack. Thus began the service of Hack Green and the airmen and women of Cheshire in the defence of the nation.

Hack Green was one of 21 fixed radar stations in the country and one of only 12 fully equipped with searchlights and fighter aircraft control. In one of the cabinets in the museum you can see some of the original communications equipment used by Searchlight Command.

Following World War II, a major examination of radar capability showed that our existing radar defence would be unable to cope with the threat posed by fast jet aircraft, let alone nuclear missiles. Any operational station needed to be protected against the new threat posed by nuclear weapons. ‘Rotor’ was the code name given to the Top Secret plan to replace the Chain Home and Ground Controlled Intercept radar network. The plan involved placing 1620 radar screens into massively constructed bunkers covering the UK. Hack Green was a semi-sunk bunker known as a type R6.

RAF Hack Green joined 12 Group protecting Britain against the perceived Soviet threat of both conventional and nuclear war. With new long range radar, Hack Green could give vital warning of the approach of hostile Russian bombers and enable the RAF to intercept with fighter aircraft or Bloodhound ground to air missiles. In accordance with the then held tripwire theory, that a number of nuclear bombers would always get through to some targets, early warning of impending attack enabled our Victor ‘V-Force’ nuclear bombers to become airborne and launch a retaliatory attack.