Tag Archives: Chichester

The First Planes I Flew

These photos are not too sharp I’m afraid.  However, they are important to me.  The summer of 1986 had me just outside Chichester learning to fly at the historic Goodwood Aerodrome.  Along with a bunch of similarly aged lads, we were being taught the basics of aviation courtesy of HMG.  It was an amazing summer and, since we were flying once or twice a day, we were learning very quickly.  I soloed on the Friday of my first week there having never even been inside a light aircraft prior to the Monday.

At some point during the summer, I borrowed my Mum’s camera and took a few pictures of the PA-38 Tomahawks that the flying school operated.  These are those planes.  In the line up of the planes can be seen G-BGRL.  This was the very first plane I flew and will always be a plane that I am fond of.  The fence behind them had a hole for a while when one student got to close with his wingtip.  It was redefined as a gate named after his student number.  The club had a PA-28 which is I the background in which I was self loading cargo for a flight for a student needing some weight and a couple of Gazelles lived next door.  That was an outstanding summer.

Re-Roofing Chichester Cathedral

Chichester Cathedral was something I would easily recognize from a distance.  It has, for many years, had a copper roof and this gave it a bright green color.  It was very distinctive.  When we were in Chichester this year, we walked around the cathedral grounds and they were working to replace the roof.  Apparently, copper had been used in a previous re-roofing because it was cheaper.  However, it was not an ideal material for the roof as it was not heavy enough and had moved in the weather allowing some significant water damage to the wooden structure underneath.

This is now being repaired and the roof material replaced with the leads that had been used prior to the copper.  The project is underway in phases and has made good progress.  Some of the exposed roof sections are already done so the remaining work is under scaffolding.  However, there is still signs of the green roof.  Soon the cathedral will look something like its original configuration.  I shall miss the green but I imagine those looking after the cathedral won’t miss it so much!

South Coast Trains

There are a few readers of the blog that like trains so this is a quick view of some UK passenger trains.  We stayed in Chichester for a while and were very close to the station.  We had to walk past it in to the town.  There were tons of trains running along this coast route so I saw several as we were finding out where things were.  Here are two of the trains.  They are both EMUs, one of which is relatively recent while the other is a pretty old vintage of train that I didn’t even realize operated in this part of the world.