Continuing the tour we drove around the airfield to where the only surviving Bristol Britannia is parked - owned by a preservation trust and looked after by volunteers.
The aircraft is in Royal Air Force Transport Command livery.
Built in 1960 at Short Brothers in Belfast as an RAF transport aircraft it was taken out of service and sold to Monarch Engineering in 1976. Subsequently registered to Afrek for commercial service in West Africa before being re-purchased by Monarch and sold to a Cuban airline followed by a short stint back in Africa before finally landing at Kemble in 1997.
A very varied past life!
Here's the nostalgia bit . . . .
What was especially interesting to me about the Britannia aircraft was that I flew in one (G-ATLE) in February 1968 as a passenger on a "charter flight tour" with Transglobe Airways- we flew from Gatwick to Gander in Newfoundland to refuel, then to Jacksonville, Florida (the trip was organised by a motor-racing club to go to the Daytona 500) - then to Jamaica for 3 days, Caracas, Venezuela for 2 days and then home via a day in Barbados for refuelling and crew rest and another refuelling stop in the Azores en route to Gatwick.
A couple of grainy photographs of me at Gander (excuse the Buddy Holly glasses, they were fashionable at the time):
Today's visit to the Britannia enabled me to get a photograph sitting in the exact same seat at the very back of the aircraft (albeit not the same one)
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