We needed to stop in at Basingstoke to visit a company that may be able to make a sliding rack for Rosie’s garage. We currently have a bunch of stacking cargo boxes strapped down in the garage and it would be much easier to access if they were on slides. The closest place we could find to stay overnite was Popham Airfield just a few minutes away. It was an amazing find!
Popham is a small local airfield, but it is amazingly busy. Small planes land and take-off every few minutes.
The camping area has five sites located at the edge of a large field, pushed up against a grove of trees.
We were surprised at the variety of planes that used this airfield. Small planes of all types. Helicopters, gyrocopters and even ultralight aircraft. A picnic area (photo at top of this post) is located right next to the main airstrip, and is a popular spot for plane watching.
We decided to stay for a couple more days to watch planes, and more importantly, do some laundry!
Rosie is sporting some new accessories: a weather station (white thing on the roof), and a clothesline (hanging off the side).
At the Abenteuer Allrad off-road show in Germany we found a vendor of cargo rail (that silver/black strip running along the side below the two windows) accessories. We were able to buy a couple of quick release fittings that I turned into support arms for our laundry line. Sounds a bit mundane, but it definitely makes drying clothes a lot easier (we have a washing machine, but not a dryer)!
On the weekend we saw some activity in the field next to where we were camped. When we checked it out we found that there was an model aircraft flying tournament. Two classes of model aircraft were in the competition: X-class drones and flying wings.
I took a few videos of the competition, but the drones and planes are relatively small and flew amazingly quickly, so that it was almost impossible to see them in the videos! So, no video post of this event (unless you want to see shaky video with occasional small dark blurs whizzing across the screen).
The trees behind the camp sites contained a set of off-road trails for 4×4’s. We found out that there was going to be a 4×4 training session, so we kept an eye out with the thought that it would be fun to see some Land Rovers and other British 4×4’s crashing through the trees!
We were a bit disappointed to find out that the training session was about recovery towing (no crashing through the bush). We stopped by to have a look, but it was seriously boring. A bunch of people standing around while another, smaller, bunch of people pontificated on the finer points of towing (yawn).
We watched dozens of planes taking off and landing. Below is a short video of some of the more interesting ones…