Cornwall

The Royal Air Squadron flew to Newquay, formerly RAF St Mawgan, on Saturday, 3 July 2021. A number of options were considered for this trip as Cornish roads can be notoriously congested in the summer. Newquay/Prideaux was chosen for the relatively easy transfer from the airfield, ample parking, and good IR facilities – the latter providing essential on the day! We were based at Prideaux Place, a lovely Elizabethan manor house on the edge of Padstow; it’s estate stretching along the Camel Estuary to the Atlantic Coast also provided a perfect site for the helicopters to land nearby.

To the organisers dismay, Saturday dawned with an occluded front lying right across Cornwall and the Newquay Metar giving a cloud base of 400’, poor visibility and drizzle. Mercifully this front moved eastwards. A few pilots made understandable decisions to pull out, but the rest decided to brave the conditions with most of the fixed wing arrivals on the day accepting vectors to the Newquay ILS. James Astor was instructed by air traffic to take up the hold at 4000’ to give way to commercial traffic, but fortunately spotted a break in the cloud and was able to join VFR downwind.

Before lunch, Elisabeth Prideaux-Brune gave us an excellent tour of the house which dates back to 1588 and has been in the family for 19 generations. Of particular interest were the dining room with its original Elizabethan panelling and carvings, and a remarkable plaster ceiling in a first floor gallery, depicting the tale of Susanna from the Apocrypha in the Book of Daniel. Also of note for the RAS was a portrait of Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, a close relative of the P-B family. A number of our group were shown the north wing of the house, untouched (literally!) since 1944 when it was occupied by combat engineers of the American Army, many of whom were killed during the second wave onto Omaha beach during the D-Day landings.
After our tour 30 of us including a few guests, and two of our hosts, Nick and Martha Prideaux-Brune, sat down to an amazing seafood lunch prepared by Tim Spedding, an award winning British chef, and his Danish partner Louise Rodkjaer. It certainly lived up to our high expectations – we enjoyed a wonderful selection of scallops, turbot and lobster and some delicious puddings.

After lunch as the weather continued to improve, we had a sunny walk to Tregirls beach on the Camel estuary, via the Prideaux walled gardens to see Tim and Louise’s organic garden/restaurant venture. A wonderful location but still work-in-progress! On our return to Prideaux Place we found Richard Hubbard had been busy in his EC120 collecting the P-B children from riding lessons and returning them to the lawn in front of the house – much to their surprise and delight.

With the poor weather having delayed our start, there was sadly not enough time for a diversion to St Eval church and the Commonwealth War Graves on the disused WWII Coastal Command airfield. It awaits a future return trip to Cornwall. After a brief tea of scones and plenty of Cornish clotted cream, we boarded the minibuses to head back to Newquay airfield. Happily, the weather conditions were less challenging for the return journey. Everyone made it safely home that evening, after a thoroughly enjoyable day with some challenging flying. For many of us, it was our first RAS trip for nearly two years.