RIAT 2022 travelling adventures

All you'll ever need to know about the UK's biggest airshow
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aviodromefriend
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Joined: Sat 26 Jun 2010, 2:22 pm

RIAT 2022 travelling adventures

Post by aviodromefriend »

OK, a lot of us will have arrived home from Fairford by now, so time to exchange our travelling experiences. Please don't post about I wanted to be parked in X but ended up in Y, let's say it must have happened a minimum of 10 miles away from the showground. I'll start:

I left it quite late starting to plan my trip. Normally I fly into Heathrow and use National Express for transport to Swindon. This time there was a threat that Schiphol (from where I normally fly) would cap off the number of passengers it would handle both for my day of departure as my date of return. So I decided not to go flying this year. checking the train rates didn't give me a feeling this was something to go with, so I decided to use Flixbus (which I had never done before).

The route they gave how to reach them appeared to end in a toilet at the trainstation. Fortunately I studied a map of Amsterdam where it would be, so I managed to find a spot where a lot of Flixbuses were loading passengers, just not for London. This appeared to be because the bus hadn't arrived by then. When it did, it was a Polish bus with Polish drivers, only talking Polish, for a trip from Amsterdam (not situated in Poland) to London (which is even less situated in Poland than Amsterdam)...

To get from the continent to the UK a trip from Calais to Dover was planned, and there was where it went most wrong... For whatever reason, one of the people in the bus didn't pass the exam set out by the UK Border Force. Of course this was a very difficult exam, mine went like
What is your purpose of visiting the UK?
Visiting the Royal International Air Tattoo
Ah, you are an aircraft buff!
(Waiving through). The man from the Border Force seemed to have missed the painfull cancellation of the B-52s. Having one person less than planned for the crossing of the Street of Dover gave a big problem for our Polish drivers, because they wanted to know who was no longer on board of the bus, so they decided to call everybody's name with the request to raise your hand while your name was called out. One passenger (NOT ME) thought it would be handy if we wouldn't rely on the drivers to call names, because they were Polish, so she volunteered to do so. She started with
Amsterdam
and waited till Amsterdam would raise his or her hand. As nothing happened she repeated
Amsterdam
before it stuck to her that nobody was called Amsterdam but the next names on the list entered the bus in Amsterdam. Fortunately the man that wasn't allowed into the UK was quite early on the list, but this whole thing had us missed the ferry, so we had to wait a few hours in Calais. Fortunately I had a few hours planned between arrival in London and departure with National Express to Swindon, because I had no idea how things works at Victoria Coach Staton. The first hours of that break were used now at Calais though...

Things looked to get tight later on, when we were in a gridlocked countryroad near London and we had to get through London's rush hour towards Victoria Coach Station. I started to get worried as my National Express ticket had no flexibility at all (as that was much cheaper). In the end we arrived in London about 45 minutes before my departure to Swindon, and I even managed to find the place from where it departed.
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verreli
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Joined: Sun 12 Mar 2017, 6:05 pm
Location: Lake District

Re: RIAT 2022 travelling adventures

Post by verreli »

I had a similar story. Set off from the Lakes at 3am, applied cruise control, arrived at 7am.

cg_341
Posts: 2598
Joined: Sun 09 Aug 2015, 1:39 pm

Re: RIAT 2022 travelling adventures

Post by cg_341 »

I left Burnley at 3am, applied cruise control and arrived at 7am too. I wonder if your speedo needs some calibration? 🤣

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Bodz156
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Re: RIAT 2022 travelling adventures

Post by Bodz156 »

I set off from Cheshire at around 2.30am on the Wednesday morning, didn't apply cruise control because my car doesn't have that....and arrived in Lechlade just after 5am.

Had to de-tour down the Fosse Way this time as (even after a pandemic where next to nobody was driving around for months) various roads along my normal M6/M5/A417 route to Fairford are still closed :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: (been that way for at least the last 3/4 shows I've driven to, which takes us back to 2017/2018!).

I was staying locally in Highworth, so only a 16min drive after the day & back again on Thursday & Friday. Friday night & Saturday night were spent slightly further away at a friend's place....Friday night drive no fun at all due to queues caused by rubber-necking drivers. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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