airborne heart

I've been dipping into AirBorne over the last few days. It's a massive free airshow in the skies over Eastbourne that's been running for the past four days. Luckily for me, I live only a ten minute walk to the seafront, where the whole spectacle takes place.

I had some family come down to stay, and we made a day of it on the beach with a picnic both yesterday and on Friday, and I wondered down again today to catch some highlights. The variety of aircraft and talent on display was incredible. We'd no sooner finished applauding the stunt pilot, when the paragliders leapt from a plane and coasted down to land on the beach in front of us. We'd only just waved off the wing-walkers (hats off to those insanely brave women), when we had to jamb our fingers into our ears to stop from being deafened by the Typhoon jet. The Battle of Britain Memorial flight, brought a Lancaster bomber and a Spitfire jet into view, and a tear to the eye. There was a Chinook helicopter, and a couple of 'crop duster' type planes that would have given James Stewart a run for his money. I couldn't put a name to half the aircraft on display, but each was either incredibly fast and shiny, as it tore along the horizon, or it buzzed like a bee and performed loops in the sky overhead, trailing (intentional) plumes of smoke. All of it was amazing, but the stars of the show were, of course, saved for the finale.

I've seen the Red Arrows put on a display on a couple of occasions over the years and they never fail to impress. Roaring through the sky, the sun glinting off their red fuselages, performing loops and barrel rolls, almost faster than the eye can follow. One moment they are seven specks out on the horizon, but heading towards the beach at hundreds of miles per hours, and the next second they are overhead, their formation fragmenting like a firework exploding as each jet screams away in a different direction, leaving the sky filled with ribbons of red, white and blue vapour. Their parting gesture is an altogether gentler, affair as two single craft, trailing red smoke, paint a huge heart in the skies above. And then they are gone.

They are jet planes and are, essentially, designed to be weapons of war, but they never fail to raise the hairs on my nape, and bring a lump to my throat.

Photo is the author's own.