Chapter Eight: In Which We Make a Pilgrimage

Our mission, should we choose to accept it: take the National Rail north to Lincoln, thence a taxi to RAF Scampton, home of the famed Dambusters, cold war nuclear bastion of the East Midlands and ancestral seat of Sara Stratton.

We boarded our train at King's Cross. I am pretty sure that I saw someone I know from Saskatchewan outside the terminal but time was running tight and he can be a slow talker so I didn't stop. I'll send an email. The trains run really fast in England. This was one scene from our window:


Thankfully the train slowed as we approached towns and we were able to get a glimpse of the fabled English countryside. It is beautiful but from the vantage point of a train, not so different from Ontario.


We had to change trains at Peterborough; we almost missed our connection because who could believe that a single car constitutes a train?? This little one chugged along at a much less ambitious pace.


The twin spires of Lincoln cathedral appeared in the distance through heavy drizzle and a filthy window:

Once in the station we grabbed a taxi to the guardroom at RAF Scampton, five miles up the road. Along the way we passed a huge exhibition ground set up for jumping and dressage, and I had a visceral memory of watching a horseshow there; it must have been the summer we left, 1968.

We waited a few minutes for Roger Crisp, a retired RAF sergeant who had served at Scampton the same time my father had, but in a different squadron. There was another couple on the tour and Roger rather excitedly told us that we would get to see the Red Arrows, the RAF aerobatic team, take off for their next airshow.

Scampton was the home of 617 squadron, the famed Dambusters of World War Two who, in the 1960s when my father was an officer in the squadron, flew Vulcan bombers equipped with Blue Steel nuclear mssiles. Now the only use the base gets is as the home of the Red Arrows. Quite a change.

Here's a Red Arrow, close up, and a row of them ready to go.

We watched as the pilots walked out to their jets one by one, wishing them a good flight. I have similar photos of my father and the rest of his crew coming off a Vulcan at the same runway as this.


The exhaust creates a pretty strong wind, and the engines a pretty fierce noise. And as each plane taxied out past us, we waved and they waved back. Apparently this is a tradition and you don't mess with it.


Here's the row of jets making the final taxi. Within minutes they were all in the air, en route to an airshow in Guernsey. I know I'm not supposed to like this stuff, but this was really cool. Even Kelly thought so.


After the free airshow, we went on to tour the rest of the base, seeing the grave site of a unfortunately named black Labrador, mascot of 617 Squadron. He was killed by a car the night his master, Group Captain Guy Gibson, led a bombing raid over Germany that earned him the Victoria Cross.

We also saw the station museum, a kind of sad affair. The planes that used to be on site, a Lancaster and a Vulcan, have been moved to other bases. What is left at Scampton is a bunch of photographs, memorabilia and models. This part of the model of a Lancaster shows the navigator at work; my father was a navigator and somewhere I have a photo of him at work at his navigation table.


Roger made sure to point out anything relevant to 617 to me, as well as the officer's mess, and after dropping the other couple off at their car, took us around to the school which Brian and Elizabeth attended and the NAAFI (Navy-Army-Air Force Institute, a low cost store for service families) where I once got lost. Having seen inside, I think it's safe to say that I got misplaced. It's small. (Apparently I was eventually located in the aisle having my face cleaned by Kim, a local German Shepherd dog.)

Most importantly, though, Roger took us to 42 Lancaster Drive, where we lived. Nothing much to look at, but I remember Brian and Elizabeth coming in that side door, and when I tried to tell Kelly that, I broke into tears. Good old Roger; he has a stiff upper lip.


From there, Roger drove us back to Lincoln, where Kelly and I had tea, a roast beef sandwich, and a ploughman's lunch in this little tea room near Lincoln Castle. It or one of the others nearby would have been frequented by my family on daytrips into the city. One day my sister loaded her little purse up with all the sugar cubes, wrapped in red paper, from the table. Alas, they no longer have these wrapped cubes so I was unable to get her a souvenir.


We walked past the castle but as time was not endless, decided to concentrate on the cathedral.


It's a massive structure.


Check out those flying butresses!


Look at how small I am!


The cathedral was consecrated in 1092, survived a fire in 1141 and an earthquake in 1185. St. Hugh rebuilt it in its current Gothic style, but as the Cathedral's website wryly notes: "Given the experimental nature of Gothic architecture, mistakes occurred, and the central tower's collapse in 1237 or 1239 was a major setback."


The 13th century damage was repaired and a new choir, the Angel Choir, was installed. Herewith the tale of the Lincoln Imp: Satan apparently sent two imps to cause mayhem on earth, and they ended up in Lincoln, where they caused general mischief, tripped up the Bishop, and threw rocks at an angel sent to stop them. One imp escaped the angel but the other was turned to stone and he remains suspended in the cathedral. We found the imp but it was hard to get a good picture. Here he is as a tsotchke:


The Lincoln Imp is just one of thousands of stone and wood carvings in the cathedral; here is another, a bird and chick adorning the end of a choir stall.


We stayed for evensong, which was beautifully sung by a choir of men and boys, and we had the chance to admire the stained glass and stonework.



Then it was time to find our way back to the train. This involved making our way down the appropriately named Steep Hill. Here a Jaguar struggles up.


In these pictures, you get a sense of the mediaeval town.



These buildings are Jews' House and Jews' Court. Built around 1150, Jews' House is one of the oldest surviving domestic buildings in Europe. Jews' Court was built several centuries later on the rins of an older building. In 1290, the Jews were expelled from England and although the Jewish community was eventually re-established, religious services were not held in Jews' Court after 1290 until 1992.


Lincoln is an old, old town -- although it's not older than London, it feels like it because so many mediaeval structures have remained, many of which host things as banal as pizza shops and hair salons.


I'm glad we went; as Roger and our fellow travellers on the RAF station tour said, "it's good to know where you come from."

Footnote: As Sara read the newspaper on the flight back to Toronto, she came across this story. One of the planes we saw on our visit had crashed. This was the latest addition to the Red Arrows and had not been painted yet.