Headcorn Airshow - A sunny start to the airshow season

 

Last weekend my airshow season started properly with a trip to Headcorn Airshow with Dad. I was so so so excited to be going to our first airshow together since 2023. 

The weather was absolutely perfect, sunny with a gentle breeze that kept it from feeling too hot. 

Fighters on the flight line

The show was opened by the Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight's Spitfire & Hurricane filling the sky with beautiful Merlin music. They set the theme for the afternoon's warbird proceedings. 

One of my favourite photos of the day is of the P47 Thunderbolt catching the sun

The Navy Wings Swordfish & the Catalina Society's 'Miss Pick Up' added some naval heritage.

It was nice to see a big aircraft like the Catalina close up -

Headcorn Aerodrome is the sight of the former RAF Lashenden and during the second world war Mustangs operated from there. This was celebrated a couple of times during the day, firstly with the Mustang pair 'Moonbeam McSwine' & 'Jersey Jerk'.

Obligatory Mustang & Maverick photo

Headcorn was lucky enough to have several Hurricanes throughout the day. Unlike the numerous Spitfires in operation (no complaints there!) Hurricanes are much, much rarer (last year's Duxford Battle Of Britain Airshow had 8 which was a record in recent years) and Headcorn was able to showcase 4. 3 of the Hurricanes operated from the airfield and flew with a rare Dunkirk Veteran MK1 Spitfire.

One of the Hurricanes

The Spitfire

Spitfire landing

There were display teams to give a change of pace with The Flying Comrades in their YAKS.

The Starlings gave their usual excellent performance dancing across the afternoon sky.

The penultimate performance of the afternoon came from another Mustang 'Miss Marinell'

The afternoon ended with the traditional Battle Of Britain 'Scramble' with an ME109 'Buchon' dogfighting with a Spitfire echoing the real-life sights of the Battle Of Britain fought over Kent. 

Buchon

Spitfire

You can see full highlights of the show here -

It was a really lovely day especially because I had Dad with me again. Yesterday I went to another sunny airshow at Duxford so keep your eyes peeled for more airshow spam. 

Love Jen

XxxX

Trooping The Colour: Chinooks, Wes Anderson & Goth Pizza

 

I started off my airshow season on a beautiful summer's day in London for the annual Trooping The Colour flypast. Unlike most years I had company with my lovely and long-suffering friend Hilary joining me to celebrate our passions for Chinooks & day drinking!

On the train

Arriving into London

After being distracted by the cute stationary shop in Victoria Station we headed down to The Mall to watch the flypast.

And to take the most epic selfie ever with the Chinooks!

Clearly the coolest people on The Mall

Hilary patiently endured the next 10 minutes of my autistic info-dumping of the aircraft that were flying over us. 

The aforementioned Chinooks

Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight Dakota

Phenom & Texans

 

Voyager & Typhoons

Globemaster

A400M

Rivet Joint

Poseidon

Typhoons

Red Arrows & F35s

I like how the F35s are framed by the Red's smoke

After a pit stop at the Eros statue to eat our Tesco salad bowls (lunch of kings) we went across to the Design Museum for their Wes Anderson exhibition. We're both fans of his quirky but charming films and it was really cool to see props, costumes & his drawings. 

Costumes from The Royal Tenenbaums

Costumes from Moonrise Kingdom

Stop motion puppets from Fantastic Mr Fox

My favourite Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel

We had a walk through the lovely Holland Park before heading to Camden.

There's a vampire-themed pizza restaurant in Camden called Lost Souls Pizza that I've been dying to try (pun fully intended) for ages now and it didn't disappoint!

It's decorated with loads of cool horror-movie posters and artwork. 

Clearly my room needs this

I fit into the aesthetic very well 

The pizzas were even black!

An accidental sub-theme of the day was my managing to match all my drinks to my eye-makeup

Our next stop was the decor polar-opposite of Lost Souls Mr Fogg's Botanical Tavern. There are loads of different Mr Fogg's locations across London (Vana and I went to the 'Antique Emporium last year) and it's my goal to visit all of them. 

So pretty

Not quite so pretty 😅

It was another decor 180 when we went down to the next door Hidden Society cocktail bar which had cosy 'old library' vibes.

I feel low-lighting is far fairer on everyone around me

They had a crazy cocktail menu inspired by works of art which lead to Hilary having a tomato soup flavoured cocktail inspired by Andy Warhol's soup can paintings. 

As the day drew to a close it was time to head home and leave London to it's beautiful sunset. 

Thank you so much to Hilary for putting up with me for a whole day!

Now we're into the airshow season I have 2 in a row with Headcorn this weekend and Duxford's Summer Airshow next weekend. Naturally there will be aviation related spam, sorry content to follow.

Love Jen

XxxX