Phil's European Tour

May 31st - July 16th, 1997

After many years of 'dreaming' about seeing the sights of Europe, I have finally done it. With the excuse of attending a Wedding to provide impetus, and the motivation of all those aircraft to behold, my partner and I made the arrangements to travel!

We departed from Auckland International at 6.45am on Saturday May 30th, flying with Qantas through Melbourne to Hong Kong. From there we flew with British Airways to Heathrow, arriving at 5.15am on Sunday May 31st, a mere 34.5 hours travelling. Our itinerary over the following six weeks included coach tours of Britain and continental Europe, the Wedding of course, visits to Cornwall, North Wales and Cambridgeshire, and an opportunity for me to indulge my passion for aircraft!

This included visits to the museums at Hendon, Cosford, Yeovilton, Old Warden, and Duxford where I also got to see the Flying Legends air show. (That's me to the left, at the end of the show). Over the next few months I will put up pages illustrating some of these places, and what I saw. The buttons at the bottom of the page will link to the pages.

One of the more exciting aspects of my trip, was that along the way I also got to meet and talk to some of my previously 'faceless 'internet acquaintances! The picture to the left shows Graham Moss (who maintains The Fighter Collection ) pages with myself, standing in front of Black Six. The picture to the right shows Martin Pengally whom I went flying with in Cornwall. One disappointment was not meeting Peter Evans face to face, but we did get to chat by phone - so I at least have a voice to go with the words.

We flew out of Heathrow at 10.30pm on Monday July 14th on a British Airways flight to Hong Kong. I'll add some pictures from Heathrow at some stage in the future. From Hong Kong we flew with Qantas via Sydney to Auckland. On the last leg I finally got around to asking if I could visit the flight deck. The picture to the right shows me in the cockpit of Qantas 747-300 VH-EBW. Up front that day were Capt Mark Kelly, F/O Peter Worth, and F/E John Hunt, and I would like to thank these gentlemen for the friendly welcome I received! More 747 pictures can be found here . We arrived in Auckland at 3.15pm to find that winter had arrived in our absense.

One thing about our trip - I now have a serious case of the travel bug . . .

The following links lead to images from some of the aviation-related places we visited during our tour. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

RAF Hendon	The RAF Museum - three pages presenting 49 images from the Main aircraft hall and the 'Battle of Britain' exhibits. More on the museum can be found here .
RNAS Yeovilton	HMS Heron - The Fleet Air Arm Museum - two pages presenting 23 images of the Museum. More on the museum can be found here .
RAF Cosford	The Aerospace Museum - three pages presenting 47 images from Hangars One & Two, and the exterior displays (Experimental & Jet aircraft / Captured Aircraft / Airliners). More on the museum can be found here .
Duxford	Flying Legends Airshow - six pages presenting 116 images with text background from the 1997 event organised by the Fighter Collection
Old Warden	The Shuttleworth Collection - two pages presenting 38 images of the Collection. More on Shuttleworth can be found here .