Until British Rail, or whatever they were called at the time, decided to get rid of diesel locomotives on passenger trains, I was a bit of a trainspotter. Not in the drug taking sense, you understand, and certainly not someone who went round taking numbers, but I did spend what was probably an unhealthy amount of time watching trains. I enjoyed watching them go into tunnels and climb embankments, in particular, but mostly I just liked the sight and sound of diesels.
There were loads of different types of locomotives too, so there was always plenty of variety to keep me happy. But then diesels, like steam engines before, were phased out and ultimately so was I. The locos were replaced by ‘Sprinter’ trains, uniformly dull, hardly worth hanging around getting cold and wet for (I know you could argue that no one in their right mind would do this even for ‘interesting’ trains)! So what to do?
With the train bug gone, apart from the odd special and a trip to a heritage preserved railway, I made the change to plane spotting. Again, not bothering to take numbers but just to watch them take off, to hear the engines roar and to wonder how on earth these bloody great lumps of metal get to fly in the first place. I went to the unofficial viewing area at the end of the runway at Bristol Airport today, carefully timed to ensure there were a good number of planes taking off. For the two hours I sat in my car (without once getting out: well it was cold), there was barely a break. I wasn’t the only one, mind. There were at least 15 cars there for most of the time and there were different types of people in each one. Lone wolves like me, families with young children trying to entertain them for free, older couples, white van men taking a break from work and the sort of blokes who probably used to hang round railway platforms before the locos went. The last bit is a guess, but I don’t think I am far wrong.
The serious anoraks park in their own place, complete with, and I am not making this up, step ladders, radio receivers and expensive state of the art camera equipment. Now these are the serious spotters, making notes of all the planes, registration numbers and all, and recording them in Encyclopedia Britannica size notebooks. And they then compare notes and numbers. Perhaps the fact that they do this, and I don’t, suggests they are not only more dedicated (obsessed?) than me, but have a far better attention span? Perhaps, if I concentrated a bit harder, I too could collect numbers? Or perhaps not!
To be fair to me, this was the first day of plane spotting I’ve done since we were in Corfu last August so it has not yet reached serious levels. In years gone by, I have been to Heathrow where they had, until 9/11, a wonderful viewing gallery called the Queen Elizabeth building and I have been to the one at Birmingham airport which is a little bit dull When Bristol rebuilt its airport, it simply didn’t bother to build a new viewing gallery which was a little harsh but a sign of the times. No point in spending valuable money to please a couple of dozen sad obsessives.
Aircraft are going the same way as trains though. They are all twin-engined and they are all starting to look the same. You can tell the difference between a Boeing and an Airbus, if you look hard enough!
I do wonder why so many of us watch planes taking off? I don’t suppose there are crowds of spotters at the bus station, writing down bus numbers. Now that would be silly. I think part of it is the wonder how they fly at all. By knowledge of science is somewhat threadbare and I struggle to grasp the theory of flight, but it obviously works. I don’t think people go up in the hope there will be an incident but there is definitely more excitement about a large jet aircraft taking to the air.
I’m flying off to Greece next week, so I will be able to carry out some minor anorak work at Heathrow, Athens and then Corfu (I have a hotel room overlooking the runway – this was requested specifically!). Heathrow will be incredibly busy, Athens quite busy and Corfu will probably be very quiet. I’m looking forward to it, but I don’t think I’ll be writing down the numbers.
