The #Hastings #RAF100 And The #RedArrows

The Royal Air Force is celebrating being around for 100 years by flying to different locations around the country. On July 21st 2018 (and again on the 22nd, though we only went to watch on the 21st, and heard their fly-by from the comfort of our own home the following afternoon) it was our turn to have them flying over our area.

We went all the way up near Old Town to see them... See...


The street sign picture is more to show where we were than anything.

Anyway, we got a couple of videos of the planes doing their fly-by, so here they are:

For anyone who doesn't know their plane models, but wants to know what the planes are: The smaller two planes are a Spitfire and a Hurricane. The larger one is a Lancaster Bomber.












By the way, if you're wondering: Lilie didn't care about the planes, and took no notice of them passing over our heads. The sky could have been empty for all the notice she took. She took more notice when the Red Arrows were doing their display later in the day. But even with that it was just mild curiosity, which soon gave way to disinterest.

We didn't get photos or videos from the Red Arrows display.

We hadn't stayed out for it, because it would have been too long. The planes in the above clips were scheduled to do their fly-by around 1:00pm, and the Red Arrows display was scheduled to happen between 6:00pm and 6:30pm. Between the time we needed to allow to get there in plenty of time in case things kicked off early - which, as it turned out, they did - and the time we would have arrived home after it was all over, we would have had to be out for a little over seven hours.

Had it just been us, that wouldn't have been too bad, because we could have grabbed some lunch somewhere after the 1:00pm show, and then spent the afternoon checking out the dinosaur event that was meant to be happening nearby, before going to hang out on the beach until it was time for the evening show. We'd have even had a choice of sandy or pebbly beach, since we had to go far enough along the coast that we weren't far from the part of our beach that's actually more sand than shingles. It wouldn't have been fair on Lilie to have her out that long though.

Unfortunately, going back there in the evening wouldn't have been an option either. So, we planned to go down to the beach not too far from where we live to see as much of the Red Arrows show as we could, since they claimed it could be seen for a couple of miles, and we do live within that radius.

They were right, and we could see it from our place. The trouble is, we lost track of time, and didn't make it downstairs in time. This meant we saw the show from indoors instead of from on the beach. For the purposes of our own viewing, this wasn't too big of a deal. We couldn't get a good angle with the camera though, and going downstairs to try and get videos and/or photos would have meant missing a chunk of it ourselves. So we decided to just enjoy the show and forget about the camera.

The Red Arrows were only in our area on the 21st of July though, so we couldn't even try again the following day.

This is the second time we've seen a Red Arrows display since we've lived in this area though, and I do have photos from the 2012 display, if you'd like to take a look at those.