Bournemouth Air Festival

Day 1

Ah yes, well. Unfortunately day one of the air festival gets a section of its own.

Last year, the Bournemouth Air Festival was near enough rained out – very few displays managed to go ahead due to rain and low cloud cover. This year, as a precautionary measure, the organisers made plans for far more ground-based displays and attractions in the event that the weather was bad enough that nothing could fly.

In response, nature sent a flood.

That’s right, it rained so badly that all of the ground events had to be cancelled as well as the flying – the only thing that took place on the first day was a thunderstorm and a good soaking.

Bournemouth’s Lower Gardens – the very spot where the majority of the ground events were to have taken place – was completed flooded out.

It wasn’t just the lower gardens either. Even the town centre was feeling the brunt, with shops closed, people soaked – oh yes, and the road broke.

We got so wet we decided we had to pop into a shop to buy some cheap, dry clothes (and hopefully a waterproof jacket, as I had failed to bring one with me). That plan didn’t quite bear out, however, as Primark was flooded too. Fortunately Next was open, albeit with a few buckets on the floors, where we had to resort to buying some more permanent clothing.

Having returned to our hotel to dry off and change, it was announced that they hoped to have a few displays in the evening as the weather had improved slightly, so we headed back out. Unfortunately, whilst standing around waiting for them to start, a mist started descending and a small amount of drizzle started falling. Barely five minutes before the flying was due to begin, it was called off. I can’t really blame them, this is the view of the RFA Mounts Bay that was moored out in Poole Bay for the event:

So with that, we headed back to the hotel with a bag of chips and hoped that the next day would have a little more action.

As it turns out, the next day – after a slightly grey start – was beautifully sunny. Which is when I discovered that not only was I completely unprepared for rain, I was also entirely unready for any form of decent weather – I had no sunglasses or suncream, and as a result my wife and I burnt to a crisp. Still, at least the show resumed on day 2, including all of the ground events – although they were relocated to the top of the East Cliff due to the damage to the Lower Gardens.

Even in the sun of the next day, there were signs of the previous day’s carnage.

That, by the way, is the same stream that took up a fair chunk of the gardens the day before.

On the Ground >>