Bilaeva

I'm heading back to Wales, but this time on my 'olidays. Haven't these past two weekends been holidays??? Well, um, no, actually. Although I did take much of Friday off to check out a couple of real beauties, no not the Middleton sisters but some old WWII clunkers, see below. Yeah, I'm now completely obsessed with WWII aircraft and planning to attend the airshow at Biggleswade August Bank Holiday. But back to this month. So we made all our arrangements yesterday. We are off to Wales, collecting a car in Cardiff and heading north to take in the Western coast and the national park at Snowdownia. My friend wants to climb Mount Snowdon. Yep, good luck, I'll be doing a drop off and heading somewhere a little flatter that day. Mountains are ok, but rugged coastline is more my thing and if I'm going to plunge to my death, I at least want to hear a terrific splashing sound before I meet my maker. Not that I have the nuts to go that close to the edge. But anyway, am looking forward to some time by the sea and my ever beach-ready bod is dying to dive into the freezing waves. Woooooo-hoooooooooo

I wasn't looking forward to the royal wedding this past weekend. I didn't mind it in theory, but having it rammed down your throat by our imagination-free media has been something of a problem the past six months. I had planned to give the whole thing a skip and bury myself in work. No chance.
A persuasive friend hauled me into London for the day. So if you can't beat them, join them, but then beat them all to a good spot! Once there, I was determined we were going to have a decent view of something. I elbowed my way through the crowds and found us a high wall on Whitehall with a great view of the action. See the X on the map below, above the label Number 5.

This is the point all the cars en route to the Abbey turned on to Whitehall, and we had a nice glimpse of the bride on her way. On the return journey we could see the carriage with the couple coming all the way up Whitehall and then turn back into Horseguards. Again, the bride was on our side, I gotta say it was pretty cool. We also had a laugh as we were some of the first to see the escaped horse!

However, definitely the highlight of the day was the flypast. We had gone back up to Trafalgar Sq to see the whole gang do the balcony appearance. They announced there would be a fly past by a Lancaster WWII bomber. They showed footage from the cockpit but I didn't realise the route would pass over us. Then we heard the most wonderful chuddering mechanical whirr, looked back over our shoulders to the skies over St Martins in the Fields, and suddenly the aircraft appeared, a Lancaster flanked by the lithe forms of a Spitfire and a Hurricane. They passed immediately over our heads and were so close, not more than 200-300 feet above us.

I have to admit for the first time all day, I felt a bit emotional. Show me a happy, beautiful young couple in love and I'm like yeah, whatever. Show me something old and I'm all a-titter.