Biggles, anyone?

For so many years, I’ve seen the airplanes coming in from South, circulating a few times around our town, then heading back from where they came from, South. Most often, it haven’t been the most modern of airplanes, you could tell from the sound of the engines. A few times, I have even seen double-wing airplanes. I guess there has been a sort of veteran flying club out there, on the fields. I know I went out there a few times, but it wasn’t that easy to locate where the airfield was. The roads on the countryside are not that straight or predictable, they turn and takes you somewhere you didn’t expected. And the landscape is totally flat too, without many landmarks that help you to navigate.

Anyway, two years ago I drove by a roadsign that warned for airplanes, by a coincidence. It stood there right along a road with fields on both sides. Airplanes passes by here, but where is that airfield? On a closer look I saw that I stood by one of the ends of the airstrip. I’d better duck if an airplane was to take off, but I saw none, not even a parked one. Just a very well-mown grass field. Via a small road to a farm, which I first thought was private, I eventually found the well hidden hangar. It stood by a few trees and it was not that obvious what type of building it was. To me, hangars have semi-cylindrical shaped roofs, this rather looked like a regular building. Except for the front doors, that said.

This was two years ago. I never saw any of the airplanes that probably had their home out there on the field. Since then, the town has moved closer and it’s been closed down and abandoned. A new road cuts the airstrip right on the middle. Still, the piece of the strip on the hangar side of the new road looks like being mown, whoever that might be doing it. The hangar has been partly de-constructed, and the previously so pretty windsock is now ripped apart by the wind. It’s like it still stands there as a monument. The cones that the pilots used for markings along the strip have been tossed under a tree. The fuel pump is no longer there, and the garden furniture that stood so you could sit down and look out on the airstrip, these are gone, too. I think this will be a missed part of Lund, for the people who spent their weekends there, maintaining and exercising their airplanes. I wonder where they flew?