Wednesday, August 21, 2013

A Day at the RAF Aircraft Museum and the ACE CAFE..

Dear Family & Friends,

Today is our last day in London for a while. In the morning we took a bit of a walk and had a nice breakfast.. We finished up our laundry and made plans for tomorrow.

In the afternoon we went to visit the RAF Museum in Hendon, north London. A great display of air craft from WWII and a complete history of air planes for the last 110 years.  It is really amazing how fast air craft technology has come in 100 years. From fragile wood and silk gliders to super sonic flight!
The was a beautiful P51 Mustang on display. My favourite  fighter of WWII. They also had a Vulcan, the first British nuclear bomber. It is a very large and sinister delta wing plane that really looks quite scary... A wonderful museum,,, The British do excel in museums..
After that we rode to the Ace Cafe.. For this we had to ride through London rush hour traffic.. On a scale of ten, ten being  perfect motorcycle riding conditions, I would give the North Circular a -3... We survived it but barely..
The Ace Cafe is one of my favourite hang outs in the world. I never miss a visit there any time I come to London. Every night they have a special feature. Tonight was Lotus and TVR night so there was a great collection of these classic British sports cars along with the usual gaggle of motorcycles.. We had dinner and chatted with the locals. Duane's motorcycle got LOTS of attention being the only Buell there and we certainly had the only two motorcycles with California license plates on them. It was a fun evening. We are definitely going back Tuesday Sept. 12th because that is British Motorcycle night and that is a real passion of mine..
Tomorrow we leave London for the Isle of Man Classic TT. We will ride about half the day on the back roads through English country side. Much more enjoyable than just blasting up the freeway. Also there is a small cafe I know of along the way I want to take Duane to.. The food is nothing special but when you enter there is a plaque on the wall stating "This Cafe Founded in 1482". That is ten years before Columbus sailed to discover America! I guess the food must be reasonably good to last that long!
From there we blast up to Liverpool to meet a friend of mine in England that will join us for our trip to Liverpool. We catch the ferry at 8:30pm and get to the Isle of Man around 11:15pm so it will be a LONG day. Luckily we have a hotel room reserved there and it is only a few blocks from the ferry.
I can hardly wait to see the Isle of Man, it has been a life long dream of mine. Will send lots of photos when I get there.
If you go to my blog you can see lots of photos of the RAF Museum and a few of the Ace Cafe too!
Good night for me here.
Jason
First stop of the day was the RAF Aircraft Museum in Hendon, North London.

Great displays of air planes and aircraft motors..

WWII Scenes everywhere..









I bet you can't guess what this is for? IT is a tether vehicle for Zeplins from WWII.

This is why you do not want to lose a war... This poor German pilot wound up stuffed and on display..

The planes in this museum are beautifully restored but only about 5% of the planes that were built for WWII still exist. Most wound up like this one..

The photo does not do this justice, this flying boat was enormous!!

An original German V-2 rocket.. It must have been terrifying to  the civilians in London during WWII.



A nicely restored British Douglas motorcycle that some rode there!


Proof we rode there!

This photo does not capture the size well. The plane is well over two stories high!



The P51 fighter, one of the best looking planes of all times...










Complete display of 100 years of air craft.

It is amazing the speed of aircraft development. Humans went from this contraption to modern supersonic fighters and transport planes in only 100 years!












NEVER under estimate you enemy. That was one of the Germans fatal flaws of WWII. They thought they were invincible. But the photo below shows home many "Kills" in German Territory this one plane did!






I believe this is the type of bomber my Father-in-Law flew in WWII..


This photo does not do this plane justice, it is HUGE and scary looking..
It was the first delta wing nuclear bomber built by the British in the 1950s. It is called the Vulcan and just looks plane scary. So many of these planes are so big I could not get far enough away from them to take a full photo!


A Humber Super Snipe doing its war effort...







Not just for preventing pregnancies.....

Now here is some scary nose art...

Literally a flying boat...



Now you know where the nose art for my Morgan 3W came from..




After the RAF Museum we rode over to the ACE CAFE for dinner and to view whatever showed up that night.. Since is was Lotus and TVR night there were lots of them there along with the usual smattering of motorcycles... A great place for classic motorcycles, cars, and rock & roll.






I am sitting out side enjoying a warm summer evening in London.... that alone was supper rare!!

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