Airshow season 2026 is GO!

 

BBMF Spitfire AB910

Last weekend I did my second show of the year - Midlands Air festival at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. This has turned into a bit of a favourite of ours - tending to attract quite a lot of the usual gang - as it has a lovely laid back chilled atmosphere without the "race to the fenceline" that so many shows seem to end up with. I'm beyond feeling interested in that these days - so a show where we can rock up several hours after the gates open and still perfectly well find a spot with a great view is a win. 

Grumman Turbo Firecat

My pal Tim and I opted to stay on the outskirts of Warwick - just a 25 minute drive away - and it was there that we met on the Thursday evening before heading to a lovely nearby pub for some good beers, food and chat - a nice start to a couple of days away. The following morning continued in a similarly laid-back fashion as we met downstairs for breakfast before heading off to the show. 

MiG 17

The flying programme included the usual suspects as well as a few things that were a bit different. A highlight for me was a MiG 17 jet aircraft - a type that first flew in the 1950's with this being the first time a number of us had seen one fly. A slightly more angular version of the familiar MiG 15 which we've seen on the circuit for a few years, this has the distinction of having an afterburner system that means it shoots tongues of flame out of the rear - great for photos!  Always a highlight is of course the BBMF - reduced on both days we attended to a single aircraft due to technical issues, but that was tempered by that single aircraft being beautiful Mk V Spitfire AB901 as per the first photo, flown by the lovely Andy Preece - always a joy to see him fly!  Day two saw some more jets - The Red Arrows and the Strikemaster Display Team's pairs display. 

Balloons mass ascent

The other big appeal of the show is that it is almost as much about hot air balloons as it is about traditional aircraft - the picture above is from the most stunning mass ascent on the Friday evening, goodness knows how many balloons in total went up, but there were definitely in excess of 60 because one of my photos has that many visible! I looked around me at one stage - and everywhere people were standing, staring at the sky with broad smiles on their faces, the happiness and joy was palpable! We agreed it was one of the best things we'd ever seen at an airshow, in fact. That night wrapped up with the beautiful "Nightglow" too - again a stunning thing, and followed by a fantastic fireworks display too. 

Hot Air Balloon nightglow

A great show and certainly one we'll go back year on year to we reckon. Next up is another trip to lovely Shuttleworth later in the month, who knows, maybe I will blog about that one too?! 

Robyn

May in the garden…

 

A late start to the month in the garden as we were away for the first week of the month of course. We gave everything plenty of water before we left and hoped for the best - and actually almost everything survived unscathed. Two of the troughs of strawberries were looking quite sorry for themselves when we got back, but a few good soakings and they soon sprang back. We also lost just a few seedlings but nothing we couldn’t re sow. 

One thing that had happened while we were away was various things bursting into flower - the Alliums at the top are one of my absolute favourite plants in the garden, so ridiculously dramatic! Our Lidl bargain Clematis “Elizabeth” is also positively smothered in flower and another Lidl bargain - the little £2.99 rose I bought a couple of months ago is flowering again, not quite the bright yellow it was when I bought it, instead more of a vibrant orange. 

In the front garden both Salvias are flowering and attracting plentiful bees and other pollinators- one of the reasons we wanted them. The rose we cut back fairly brutally at the end of the winter has grown back to pretty much the enormous size we cut it back from and is  now flowering well with masses more buds - we may even get some cut flower from that this year - and it’s definitely going to need a scalping next winter! 

Not many plant purchases this month - although there was a visit to our favourite local nursery and some more herbs found their way home with us - 2 Crimean Basils, I'd anticipated Greek, but these seem to be the same sort of more woody variety so I'm hoping they will attract the bees just as well, plus a gorgeous Tricolour Sage and a lovely sturdy little Tarragon - we both love tarragon! One of the Basils has already been tucked into a pot at the front, and the others will probably end up in pots for the time being at least as well - I'd love to see if I could nurture the tarragon through the winter, although that will take some effort I suspect! These were just £1.20 each - an absolute bargain for really good quality plants. 

We got more seedlings on the go too - although the chilly weather at the start of the month combined with what once again seems to be some really quite disappointing compost means that things are generally seeming to struggle quite badly. Apparently we're not the only ones finding this to be a problem either - and even the RHS are advising feeding from far earlier than would be normal!  The sudden burst of heat during the final week of May made a massive difference though - although of course it hit while we were away again just to complicate things! We got back to beans bursting through and an entire module set of peas - having finally given up trying to get them to any sort of sensible size in the ground this year (we suspect the birds are getting their own back from the RSPB instructions to take in seed feeders!) and those have been mostly transferred to a large pot, although there will be some more to go into the ground too. Two Tromboncino squashes and one courgette were finally deemed large enough to make it to the ground too, and MrEH set up the obelisk and got the runner beans in around that - less this year as we had far too many in 2025 and may be eating them for ever more! We've also got several troughs sown with salads of various sorts - I may well invest in some more troughs so we can keep successionally sowing things like that as well. 

We've had our first small harvest of the year in the shape of the first of the strawberries - delicious they are too - although hopefully some of the salad is also not too far away from being edible sized now also.  June will be a month with the weekends spent at home - so next month's post will catch up with where we're at in terms of the veg planting as a whole. 

Robyn

May reading…

 

 The camping trip at the start of the month meant several books read before the first week of May was even done. We’d had a plan - MrEH was reading a Lee Child so the intention was that he would bring that down for me to take over when he finished it. Instead he finished it the day before we travelled, and left it at home, meaning I was suddenly shorter on reading material than expected - not a happy state of affairs for me! No matter though, a trip to the charity book stall on Truro Market lead to the purchase of a couple more options for just £1each with the money going to the local Rotary Club, so a win all round.

First up was a book I’d brought down with me though- Linwood Barclay’s Trust Your Eyes. Regular readers here may remember that I’m a bit of a fan of Barclay’s style of writing, he does suspense and the twist in the tail exceptionally well. This one is the story of two brothers in the aftermath of the death of their father in what we rapidly realise may be slightly unusual circumstances- but strangely enough that is not the main story here. The younger brother Thomas is described in a way that makes clear he is fairly severely autistic- his main hobby involves viewing the world via mapping program clearly designed to resemble google street view- and this is a hobby that takes his time to the exclusion of almost everything else. It’s while viewing a particular street in Manhattan that he spots something suspicious in a window, and it is this story that then rolls out through the rest of the book. Cleverly written - the final chapters see several twists and turns as well as at least a partial explanation for why Thomas is as he is. Older Brother Ray is the glue that holds the whole thing together with the story mainly being told from his perspective. This one will be heading back with us for MrEH to read. 

Next up, the one in the header picture - J D Kirk - An Isolated Incident - a Truro find which immediately sounded excellent. Set in the Highlands of Scotland (so ticking the always popular “somewhere I know” box) and told from the perspective of  a Police Officer - DCI Jack Logan. Kirk (not his real name) write with humour and pace while still managing to pen a good and suspenseful story - Logan feels like a strong character and the supporting cast are also well crafted, indeed this book is one of a fairly prolific series so I’ll be keeping an eye out for more. This one will also be heading back with us as MrEH has now started reading it! 

Onto the second Truro find  - a “double header” of two Ian Rankin Rebus books, with the first being The Hanging Garden. Rankin (and Rebus!) are sufficiently legend that little needs saying really - and this is much as one might expect, with Rebus tangling with the Edinburgh gang scene while juggling multiple cases including one relating to WWII war crimes. The usual Rankin musical references weave their way through the story, and of course Rebus does his usual trick of breaking all the rules while still ending up smelling of roses! I debated whether to read directly onto the second book - “Dead Souls” and eventually decided to do so as I already had the book to hand. It works well as it refers to various events from The Hanging Garden  although I did realise within a few pages that I already had it, and had read it not long before! Still an enjoyable read though. Unusually in this case I will hang on to both copies as the "double header" has some damage, so if I find a better condition copy of  the Hanging Garden I'll let it go at that stage instead.

Time for what seems to have become a monthly Lee Child Reacher read then - In Too Deep. This one unusually starts out with a battered and broken Reacher -and a bad situation which rapidly seems to be getting worse, too. Of course we know the pattern here by now don't we - I was discussing the Reacher books with a pal and we agreed that they aren’t quite formulaic as such, but there is definitely a degree of a pattern with them. Sometimes it’s good to know what you’re going to get with a book though - these are the Wetherspoons pub of the reading world! 

A second trip to Cornwall at the end of the month inadvertently lead to me stocking up on a few more books - the supermarkets all have excellent charity book shelves and I found a couple there, then three more at a market we visited - one of which was a Val McDermid that I may actually have at home, time will tell (I am writing this section of the post in Cornwall) so Still Life was the next choice. A Karen Pirie tale, always a good read. I have actually read this one before but long enough ago that I had forgotten the storyline as I discovered when I went on to read it, so all good! As with most of her books it was mainly set in Edinburgh although this one does seem to get about a bit too - as I have said before though I do like a book where I know the locations - it definitely makes for a better read when you don’t have to try and picture the settings.

Robyn.

Another garden project…

When we moved in to the house our sellers offered to leave us their garden furniture - and as we had none of our own, saying yes was a sensible decision even though it had clearly seen better days. As it turned out - two of the four chairs were pretty much fit only for the tip, which was fine as we only needed two anyway, and the table was far bigger than we needed, but was “OK-ish”. Fast forward to this winter, and we decided that a smaller table was a must as we want to fit an additional water butt - we already have one which collects the water from the office/shed roof, and the giant blue bucket deals with what comes from the log store roof, but there is a huge amount coming off the back of the house and the extension which is currently just going straight into the drain. The search started for a replacement table that was the right size, the right height, and not extortionately expensive. Let me tell you, it was not a successful search! 

After an awful lot of “too big!”, “too small!” And “we’re not paying that!” we came to the conclusion that what we wanted was something roughly the size of a standard pallet,  at a height we could use for seed sowing and potting on but also for just putting a beer on when we are sitting outside relaxing - but we also came to the conclusion that this didn’t actually exist…which was when our eyes lit on the pallet we happened to have lying around, and a plan was hatched.

Obviously there was a little more needed than just the pallet - but a quick scout through the shed revealed that in fact we already had timber for legs (gained when a store cupboard at my work was being cleared out) and screws are something we’re never short of- we found that all we were likely to need to buy was four right angle brackets to brace the legs to the tabletop. Having confirmed we were all systems go, we cracked on with measuring and cutting legs, then getting all the various components rubbed down and painted - in the same “Cornflower” paint we’ve used for the office and shed walls, of course! 

The pallet was one of those with quite open slats which wouldn't really be ideal for a table, but handily we had another one which could be cannibalised so filling the gaps proved to be as simple  just drilling and screwing them in place. Attaching the legs in a way that would ensure that the whole structure was sturdy enough was the biggest challenge of the project really- the screws we had weren’t quite the ideal length - but we couldn’t get anything longer in place as there wasn’t space to get a screwdriver in with a longer screw. Thankfully some very meaty right angle brackets saved the day. 

Our other main concern was whether the base of  the legs would rot as a result of being in contact with potentially wet ground through the winter months at least - it felt like it would be a shame to put the work and time in only to find that it didn’t last because something as silly as that. That problem was solved when I suggested a small piece of timber screwed to the base of each leg effectively as feet, and MrEH went a step further by cutting a square of plastic to fit between the two pieces to prevent water being drawn up from one piece of timber to the other. As and when the feet do rot, we will simply cut and attach new ones. 

Once all assembled we really were quite impressed - I mean yes, it looks like a pallet on legs, sure, but that’s what it is after all! It’s good and sturdy, exactly the height we wanted, AND it should easily give space for the war we butt to be fitted alongside it. Most importantly it looks far nicer than what was there before, especially with the addition of my two wine-box herb planters on top! 

A new garden table for £7 plus a bit of time and effort? That will do nicely! 

Robyn

Frugal Friday…

 

I was tempted to call this a “Thrifty Thursday” post instead when I decided to use the photo above as the header - resisted temptation though! This is of course a bank of Thrift down at Gunwalloe on the Lizard Peninsula, taken on our recent week’s holiday down there. As you know, we budget for our annual fortnight up in the Western Isles, that money is set aside and only used for that purpose and things related to it, so any other trips we want to take during the year are funded separately, and this one was no exception.

We knew we wanted to do a full week away, but we’re also determined that it couldn’t cost a fortune as the budget simply isn’t there for that, so decided from the start that careful choices around where we spent money were going to be the winner here to let us have a really enjoyable week without breaking the bank. Accommodation is of course always the big ticket item for a holiday - thankfully we have the tent and are more than happy to use it - and our chosen campsite is a very reasonable £15 a night for a tent, two people and car. To that was added the single night  in a Premier Inn on the way down - £53 there, but it made the difference between getting a full day in a Cornwall on our arrival day and not, so worth the spend. It also provided us with a good breakfast that day for no additional cost, and full travel mugs for the onward part of the journey. Accommodation total then: £158.

When staying in self catering accommodation of any type when away, it is extremely easy for food to become a really significant spend - when in the Hebrides we tend to have lunch out and about, then cook our evening meal back at the cottage, and we took much the same approach for this trip too. We have two camping stoves, a saucepan and a frying pan, and can rustle up some tasty options using those, this time round we mostly opted for salads of some description with an added protein element, and sometimes some cooked pasta thrown in to the salad. It’s straightforward to cook, fairly healthy and balanced, and most importantly tasty. Breakfasts were eaten at the campsite each day - either bacon & egg butties or simply toast - and an even got a double-Yorker in a box of supermarket eggs! Lunches out and about were mostly toasted sandwiches or pasties, with an ice cream or cake for pudding - not cheap in that part of the world, but also not the most pricey choices. Food totalled a fraction over £200, plus some odds and ends that were purchased directly from our own spending accounts - and some household purchases such as topping up our levels of the delicious Cornish Salt flavoured blends. 

Of course there was diesel - for the journey down and travelling about while there. We used the petrol prices app to find the best priced filling stations, and managed to fill up more cheaply throughout than we would have done at home, including stumbling across one exceptionally well priced for the current time option on the Lizard where the service was still attended too - definitely not something you see in many places these days! We put in £152 worth of diesel while away, including a tankful on the way back which will see us through the next week or so of regular driving. There was also some additional travel - two days spent using a day Ranger train tickets (£11.30 each with our railcard) and buses totalling £12 on Saturday to save using the car on a day when we knew we would be visiting some pubs. Parking in a few places too - although generally we opted for reasonable street parking and a short walk to our destinations - another £6 or so - £63 odd in total there then.

Spending not mentioned here came straight from our own spends accounts - beers here and there, oddments of food as mentioned, and I’m not totalling that up simply because it was all stuff we might well have spent during a week at home anyway. 

The total then - roughly £575 for the bits mentioned above. Not “cheap” - but still an extremely good price for a thoroughly enjoyable week’s holiday. There were ways we could have saved more - by choosing to make sandwiches at the tent to take with us for lunches for example, or by taking more food with us. We try not to do the latter in particular though - because when visiting places that rely on tourist spending for their income we’ve always felt it’s important to try to support that. For that reason we choose independent stores over chains where possible, try to buy local products, and aside from things like tea bags, coffee and condiments, take relatively little from home. We do always empty the fridge and fruit bowl of anything perishable- so the remainder of my bottle of oat milk went with us, plus some apples and citrus fruit. Our trusty plastic box full of gleaned sachets of salt, pepper and sauces came in handy as always - including helping out a fellow camper who had found himself without sugar one morning! 

A truly lovely week, funded from a mixture of personal fun money, a surplus accumulated in our food account (deliberately accumulated for just this reason) and some surplus from our bills account too - it will mean a little less into savings this month, but so be it. We’re fortunate to be able to take trips like this, all the more so at a time when many folk are struggling with the increasing cost of living- and we definitely do not lose sight of that privilege. We didn’t consciously choose not to spend on entry fees to places - there just wasn’t anywhere much we found ourselves interested to visit which had such fees. At Tintagel we arrived after the main site was closed and were delighted to find that we could still explore the area up to the bridge for free. Our time on the trains let us see huge amounts of the county as we passed through it, and included a trip across the Tamar Rail Bridge and back, something I’d never done before. A lot of the things we enjoy are simply free anyway - just wandering about and exploring different places.

Robyn

A circular walk and an unusual view of our tent!

 

We’ve camped at Magor Farm a few times now - it’s a lovely location for exploring Cornwall, just outside Camborne and backing on to the Tehidy Country Park, less than a mile from the coast. We’ve often talked about doing the circular walk from the site out to the coast, along the coast path and then back through the park, but until this visit time has always been too short to fit it in - this time though we were determined that we ought to make the time to do it as we were down for longer. 

MrEH had sketched our chosen route out on Google Maps so we knew roughly what distance to expect, and as usual we used the OS Maps app to navigate- we actually pay the annual subscription for that as although we love proper paper maps, we certainly wouldn’t want to be paying out for an OS map for everywhere we visit, and the app makes it easy to always have decent mapping on hand. This one was fairly straightforward anyway - with the only really tricky bits being working out where we needed to cut back inland from the coast path, and then the route through the Country Park.

Out of the site then and a short distance along the road to the village of Coombe - little more than a cluster of houses really - ignoring the first footpath we saw which would take us into the park itself, in fact we would see that one later in the walk. Instead we opted for an uphill path slightly further on which took us through farmland and out to the coast. Sure enough with just 0.8 of a mile ticked off on my watch we found ourselves crossing the road and turning right onto the coast path with the most stunning views towards Godrevy to the left and Portreath to the right. 

The coast path is beautiful - just a riot of wildflowers at this time of year, plus of course the amazing views. We had glorious weather too - in fairness it probably wouldn’t be quite so much fun in driving rain!  It was sunshine we had though, and we ambled along stopping to identify this plant or that, or to see what birds were about (the trip added plenty to our year list and one “lifetime first” as well in the shape of a Lesser Kestrel which was hanging about at Goonhilly Downs on the Lizard Peninsula) before finding the right turn onto the track which would take us across to the road, back on ourselves for a few yards then across into Tehidy Country Park. 

This really was a walk encompassing most of the various different terrains you might expect from the South West - starting (and ending) with country lanes, farmland, the coast, then the woodland and even some ponds and lakes later on. All the way though and everywhere we looked absolutely swathes of spring flowers in bloom. 

We’d timed our walk so that an early lunch could be had at the cafe in the park - and that absolutely didn’t disappoint. A small menu, but a thoughtful one including several choices for vegetarians. We opted for pulled pork ciabatta toasties which were an excellent size and arrived served with a deliciously crisp mixed salad. I followed that up with the cream tea, just look…

…that cream generously covered both halves of the enormous scone, gave MrEH a blob to have with his chocolate brownie and there was still some left! The teapot too was a generous size, I had a cup and a half from it, and MrEH finished the remaining cupful after finishing his coffee. At £6.80 that was certainly one of the bargains of the trip! 

From there it was back to the woodland path which eventually lead us along the back of the campsite - although there was plenty to be seen ahead of that - including some friendly squirrels happy to pose for photos. Also the lovely carved from a fallen tree otters denoting the “Otter Bridge”  which crosses the stream which eventually runs alongside the other side of the campsite - and indeed eventually we glanced to our left and there through the trees we could see our tent! 

Then the final stretch out of the country park, via the footpath we’d spotted earlier, and retracing our steps back along the road to discover that we were the only campers on the site which felt like quite the treat - it never did get busy although as expected the bank holiday weekend saw quite a lot more people. The facilities are plentiful though, and there is plenty of space for people to spread out - our carefully chosen little spot in the middle of the site served us well. Magor might well be my favourite site anywhere now I think - the family who own it have farmed here for generations and are lovely,  it and they have precisely the laid back approach we enjoy from a site, and it’s safe to ensure that we will be back! 

Robyn

Cornish adventuring…

 

Everyone loves a bank holiday weekend, right? And most of us love them even more if we can use the benefit of a free day off to create a nice holiday around it, using less actual holiday days from our jobs! This is precisely what MrEH and I have done - with an extra 3 days for me, and 5 for him tacked on to give us a full 10 days off, by the time weekends are accounted for. It’s sometimes possible to combine Easter and the early May bank holiday in this way too for. Really extended break - although not this year as they are too far apart. 

With a new tent to play with, we decided to start our time off by heading down to Cornwall - and the additional day off before the weekend meant that we decided to travel part way down on Thursday night to attempt to get ahead of the traffic. At exactly the right time an email arrived from a popular budget hotel chain offering free breakfast for a stay within dates that were just perfect, so we opted for the £53 spend there enabling us to head to Taunton for our first night, and breakfast well on Friday morning too. An early ish departure from there meant that there was very little traffic heading west for the last leg down to one of our favourite campsites near Camborne too, and all in all it was a very satisfactory way of doing things! 

We’ve stayed at Magor Farm Campsite a number of times - it’s pretty much our perfect site, quiet, slightly dated but decent (and spotlessly clean) wash blocks, a small room for washing up, drying wet clothes etc (and now - joy - with the addition of a freezer for ice packs too!). Aside from the freezer, it has a timeless feel as though little has changed since the 1950’s.  At the time of writing I think about 9 pitches are occupied - it was a little busier on Friday and Saturday nights - but still quiet enough that you never seem to have to wait for a toilet, or a shower cubicle. Children play quietly, with parents respecting the general laid back vibe of the place, and old-school fun like donning wellies and splashing in puddles is very much much favoured.

Friday was a lazy day - after the drive down we decided we’d take our time getting pitched, then just potter about in the afternoon, so we had a short wander at Portreath, followed by a drive round to Hayle, then back to the site for food and a couple of beers. Saturday however was well planned in advance- we’d decided to leave the cat at the campsite for the day and use public transport. Just under a two mile walk (almost entirely up hill!) to the bus stop and a short though meandering, round the houses bus ride to the station, where we purchased day ranger tickets - letting us travel wherever we wanted in the county. With our railcard these cost just £11.30 each, an absolute bargain!  We opted to start in Truro - the market there has a Cornish Sea Salt stall and I wanted to top up supplies of their fabulous flavoured salts, and a short walk away in a back street is MrEH’s favourite Tugboat Coffee - he only uses their beans these days, and usually orders online, but likes to pop into the shop if we’re down here. To my delight I also found a lovely independent sweet shop which sold salted liquorice! 

Back to the station then (uphill all the way - are we seeing a theme?!) and the short ride down to Penryn. A walk to the back of an industrial estate (I bet you can guess the nature of the in line to get there, yes?!) saw us first aiming for food - The Aussie Smoker who we first encountered a few years back when they worked out of a shack (their words) next door to Dynamite Valley Brewery. They’ e expanded since in a snazzy unit with an event space and undercover eating area,  and we thoroughly enjoyed the enormous portion of loaded fries we each had, prior to heading to the Verdant Brewery and taproom. I’ve long been a fan of Verdant’s beers, and it was a delight to spend several hours enjoying not only their delicious keg beers, but relatively unusually several in cask too. The original plan had been to head from there down into the town to Dynamite Valley’s micro pub, but a combination of heavy rain and so many beers to try actually kept us at Verdant for longer than planned. 

All in all an excellent day - and the train tickets were such great value (and made life so easy) that we pretty much decided there and then to do another day using them later in the week. It is a very odd feeling getting in a train knowing that you can literally just choose where to get off though! 

Robyn