Halfway to 18!

Yesterday was Arthur's 9th birthday! My baby is getting so big....

We went out to Duxford, part of the Imperial War Museum and home to many, many airplanes, mostly WWII vintage, but some older, and quite a few American cold war machines, including a B52. We stopped in the village of Duxford (which, as you can see, has a pump in the square, and a nice little old church, too) to have lunch at the John Barleycorn, a wonderful old pub with enormous and tasty lunches. After, um, soup, smoked salmon, Irish stew, an omelet and a ploughman's lunch -- oh and 2 pints of beer, a ginger ale and a ginger beer -- we made our way out to the museum. Of course, it is huge. There were, I think, 4 hangars filled with planes, some restored, and some being worked on now. They have airshows in the summer and a lot of these planes are airworthy.

Not this one, though! This is the skeleton of a biplane, I think a Gladiator. It was the last biplane fighter for the British, and did take part in WWII here and there. Apparently the Germans had seen these planes, and the blurb at the museum said this might have led to over-confidence on their part! Ah, though, the Brits had the Spitfires, too!

You could climb up to look in windows of a few of the planes, and outside there were some large old passenger planes you could go into. One even had bunks for the crew to rest in! And there were other outdoor exhibits, like this V1 on its launcher!

The schmanciest building was the American museum. They have things arranged more or less chronologically, with sections for planes from various conflicts. The B52 does take up the whole darn place, but they tuck things over and under it! It's enormous... There was a Blackbird, the fast, high-flying reconnaisance plane. There was also a piece of the Berlin Wall, with a series of news clips from the cold war, and a meter turning closer to peace or war as events took place.

Around this point Elaine began to flag, so we passed on the remaining building, where they keep land machines, like tanks and what have you. Actually, we missed some other stuff, too. I was supposed to check on Monty, but didn't manage that, either.

It was a long bus ride, but a very good place to visit! We missed a lot and will have to go back in the summer.

Then home for a bit of supper, including chocolate cake, of course. Happy birthday, Arthur!

(I can fit in a teeny bit of knitting news here. I used up my wool for the edging of the Maya circle. About 6 inches of edge to go!! Lucky for me, Alison, with whom I knit on Wednesdays, has some of this very yarn in her stash, and she will kindly provide me with the remaining few meters of it I need. I should be able to show you the finished thing on Thursday! Thanks, Alison!)