This year’s annual pilgrimage to the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford started on Friday 19 July 2019. A total of 4 coaches started the journey towards Calais from various ‘take-off’ locations. One coach started in Zwolle, one in Amsterdam, one in Eindhoven and one in Dusseldorf. Eventually, after picking up all participants, the coaches met in Calais and travelled to Fairford as one group after driving off the ferry in Dover.
The flying display on Saturday (20 July) brought a fly past to commemorate 70 years of NATO and a fly-by of a retro-colours British Airways Boeing 747 with the Red Arrows. Furthermore the major attractions of this year’s edition (Ukrainian Su-27, Romanian MiG-21 and Spanish AV-8B) displayed.
After the show the coaches headed for Dover again and this went according to plan. A party of seven was dropped off in Membury service area for a night in the hotel there, they were combining the one and two-day trips to Fairford (visiting RIAT on Saturday, Sunday and Monday). Two of the four coaches inadvertently ended up on an earlier crossing to Calais. So, some were lucky have won some time on the way back, while all were dropped off at the desired drop-off location in time.
In the meantime, on Saturday afternoon, the group that was to visit RIAT on Sunday and Monday started its journey to Fairford as well. This was a smooth ride as well.
