It's started!

Yep, we're flat out into the Airshow season now and once again I've been out and about round the shows watching those whizzy Little Red Jets doing their thing. No big plans this year (2014 was simply to see as many Reds displays as possible in the course of the year, last year was to see them in England, N. Ireland, Scotland & Wales all in the space of the one season) aside from just to get out and about with the gang as much as we can and thoroughly enjoy ourselves. Somewhere along the line there does seem to be a plan to see the boys outside of the UK for the first time (Republic of Ireland, since you asked) and I'm toying with another "display on an Island" too - but that's a work in progress at the moment. ;-)

So far I've done Shuttleworth (sunny, glorious)...

...before our Hebrides holiday interrupted proceedings. Once back it was onto the first Torbay Airshow held in Paignton in June - the weather was mixed but it was a fantastic weekend and the organisers should be rightly proud of themselves. None of the rest of the gang could make it down that far but I had a hilarious weekend with the Reds PR team, regardless. The weekend afterwards saw me make a solo trip down to Folkestone - but a wasted trip also as the weather intervened, the boys were weatherbound at their operating base and unable to get to us. The next day - back with Claire, Tom & Ant and back to Weston-Super-Mare for a day - this one's become a firm favourite of ours over the past few years so this year we decided to try a different viewpoint...

...not the best of days weather-wise again - but that view down on the display made up for that. The following day was Cosford, which once again came with grey skies and rain showers - I'm sure one year we'll get lovely weather for this one but it wasn't to be this year. It's still good though as we get to meet up with some more far-flung members of the gang including Colin, Layna and their gorgeous lad Logan, as well as lovely Aunty Di - it's the social side of the airshows that's as much fun as the flying, in fairness!

The weekend after was the National Armed Forced Day event in Cleethorpes - so Claire, Tom and I piled into Claire's long-suffering Corsa and headed off there - and a thoroughly enjoyable event it was. Although not an "airshow" as such we still got the Reds, Chinook, BBMF and lots of parachutes, and some decent weather to see them all by, also, so we were happy enough with that!

Most recently of all last weekend I joined Anthony for a day at the Yeovilton Air Day - this was one we went to last year but due to a variety of reasons I really didn't enjoy much, but in fairness to it I was well aware it was me, rather than the event itself, hence when Ant asked I said yes to doing it again. I was glad I had too as it felt totally different this year - we arrived earlier and so were able to get a spot at the front (a big deal when, like me, you're 5'1"!) and had a lovely day with THE most fabulously dramatic skies at times...

Next up is Airtattoo at Fairford - three days of wall to wall flying action and more importantly for me, the Reds jets on the ground too so I will be concentrating on my groundshots of the engineers a lot of the time. Look out for the #CircusAtWork hashtag on Twitter (@EssexHebridean) & Instagram (@Robyn_PF) to see those. Looking forward to catching up with a few old friends and getting to know some of the new guys also. We've got the debut of the new F35B fighter there too which will be good - it'll be doing some flypasts with the Reds too which will be good to see.

Robyn