Elephants’ Graveyard

And for today’s activity, a road trip to a field between Tetbury and Cirencester. No, I didn’t take the opportunity to pop and say hello to Charles Windsor and his wife Camilla Parker-Bowles. Instead, along with a close friend, I visited Cotswold Airport in Kemble.

I went to Cotswold International, which it would probably be called if some swivel-eyed advertising shark got hold of it, to see the big planes and there are plenty of them. Indeed, the Boeing 747s, including the recently retired BA 747 G-CVIN, were parked a few yards from the main road.

My first thought always when confronted by a Jumbo Jet is, ‘How the fuck does that get off the ground?” With this one (photographed above), it was easy to understand why she could not get off the ground. All her engines had been removed. In fact, before these beautiful aircraft are broken up at the on site breakers yard, they are stripped for usable parts; everything from engines to wires. It was likely that this plane was a shell. But what a shell.

It’s easy to get airside at Cotswold because there’s no one to stop you. And once you navigate your way around the site you end up next to the runway, next to a burger van which is temporarily replacing the apparently excellent restaurant, closed like just about everything else due to COVID-19.

For all the joy of seeing these enormous aircraft from close up, the reality is that most of them will never fly again. As well as aircraft from BA and KLM, there are planes from airlines all over the world. Only the Corsair 747s look they might one day take to the air again. I do hope so.

There’s an elderly Boeing 727 on site, too, and I learned that it is privately owned by a man who although he can’t actually fly a plane turns up just to spool up the three rear engines just for fun. My kind of man.

Unfortunately, the nearby runway was used only by small propellor aircraft and no giants of the sky, but for all that I loved my visit. Cotswold Airport isn’t going to become a proper airport anytime soon and it’s all the better for that. It’s free and the burger van does a mean cup of tea. These tiny things really do please my tiny mind.