TALES FROM THE HILLS

(Ashmansworth and Crux Easton)

In August 1933 the Newbury Weekly News ran a great story. Geoffrey de Havilland and his son had landed at the Ashmansworth Flower Show in two planes, straight from the King’s Cup flying races, and had taken villagers up for spins round the parish. Geoffrey, the son, was flying a six-seater ‘Dragon Rapide.’

It was interesting to visit Duxford aerodrome last year and see its collection of historic planes. The collection is vast: hangars full of fighters and bombers (this is part of the Imperial War Museum) and a Concorde. Outside stands a magnificent row of airliners: VC10, Viscount, Trident, BAC 111 and so on. You can climb aboard as long as the volunteer wardens have shown up to welcome you.

We can feel justly proud that all these magnificent planes were once made in England; but we can feel even prouder that, amid that vast static display of excellence in aeronautical engineering, your only realistic chance to fly in an historic plane is a Dragon Rapide, built by the lad from Crux Easton, de Havilland, and built so well that people can still afford to keep it flying.

Yes, you can fly in a Spitfire. That’ll be £2975 for 30 minutes. But a flight in the Rapide over the picturesque colleges in nearby Cambridge is yours for just £99.

The Rapide is the first plane I ever flew in, in the early 1950s, at Lympne in Kent. It was like a fairground ride – just seven-and-six for twice round the airfield, brief but brilliant. That’s 37.5 pence in today’s money.

Now that we’ve had two De Havilland centenary celebrations up here, with massed Tiger Moths flying in to Crux Easton and to Seven Barrows, it would be nice to have our own centenary celebration, with a Rapide landing at the Ashmansworth Flower Show in 2033.

I’ll start saving my pennies.

Note:

In last month’s tale of the balloon there was a bit of a slip. The balloon was over sixty feet high and a law unto itself; so the crew didn’t drag the balloon anywhere. It dragged them.

It’s a shame that with these proposed wind farms covering the country, balloons will soon be a thing of the past, or perhaps that should be ‘gone with the wind.’

Agricola, April 2025